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EDUCATION AND LIFE 



PAPERS AND ADDRESSES 



BY 

JAMES H. BAKER, MA., LL.D. 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, AND FORMERLY 

PRINCIPAL OF THE DENVER HIGH SCHOOL; AUTHOR 

OF "ELEMENTARY PSYCHOLOGY" 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO, 

91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
LONDON AND BOMBAY 
1900 



|uibr»u jr of Gori<ir«««| 
PV«. CuP»Li ReC£iVEO 

• OCT 80 1900 

I Cof yrig:Hl •"try 



b 



si:C<Nr COPY. 

otiow wviaoN, 
OCT 25 1900 






Copyright, igoo, by 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



All rights reserved 



Press of J. J. Little 8t Co. 
Astor Place, New York. 



PREFACE. 

The papers and addresses constituting this vol- 
ume were prepared for various occasions. They 
naturally fall into two groups : papers on Education, 
and addresses that come under the broader title of 
Education and Life. The subjects of the first group 
are arranged in a somewhat logical order, namely : 
a general view of the field, especially as seen by 
Plato ; secondary education and its relation to the 
elementary and higher ; some principles and prob- 
lems of the elementary and secondary periods ; 
higher education ; the practical bearing of all mental 
development. 

Some of the leading views presented in this book 
may be expressed in the following propositions : 
While our educational purpose must remain ideal, 
all education must be brought in closer touch with 
the work and the problems of to-day. For the safety 
of democracy and the welfare of society, the social 
aim in the preparation for citizenship must be given 
more prominence. Although methods that make 
power are the great need of the schools, mental 
power without a content of knowledge means noth- 
ing ; each field of knowledge has its own peculiar 
value, and, therefore, the choice of studies during 
the period of general training is not a matter of in- 
difference. Studies belonging to a given period are 
also good preparation for higher grades of work — 



vi PREFACE. 

a view to be more fully considered by the colleges. 
In the readjustments of our educational system, the 
entire time between the first grade and college gradu- 
ation must be shortened. Some common-sense con- 
cepts which have always dwelt in human conscious- 
ness, properly kept in view, would often prevent us 
from wandering in strange pedagogic bypaths. We 
have suffered from false interpretation of the doc- 
trines of pleasure, pursuit of inclination, punishment 
by natural consequences, and following lines of least 
resistance. Evolution and modern psychology, in 
their latest interpretations, are reaching a safe phi- 
losophy for school and life. At the close of this 
century we have almost a new insight into the doc- 
trine of happiness through work. The heroic, 
ethical, and aesthetic elements of character are of 
prime importance. We often find some of the best 
principles of teaching and rules of life in literature 
which does not rank as scientific, but contains half- 
conscious, incidental expression of deep insight into 
human nature, and in some of the writers referred 
to in the addresses we find, not only good peda- 
gogics, but fresh hope for both romance and prac- 
tical philosophy. For our view of life and for our 
theory of education, we are to interpret evolution 
and judge the purpose of creation, not by the first \ 
struggle of a protozoan for food, but by the last 
aspiration of man for Heaven. 



CONTENTS. 

EDUCATION. 

PAGE 

I. Heritage of the Scholar .... 3 

Greek and Teuton, 3. Our heritage, 5. 
Education, 9. Force of ideas, 14. The ma- 
terial and the spiritual, 18. The American 
student, 19. Literature of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, 21. Romance not dead, 23. Aspect of 
science, 25. Practical side, 26. 

II. Plato's Philosophy of Education and Life . 29 

Historical, 29. Plato and the influence of 
Platonism, 32. Philosophy, 34. Religion, 38. 
Ethics, 39. Education, The state, 43-46. Com- 
ments, 46. " Plato, thou reasonest well," 49. 

III. Secondary Education : A Review . . 50 

Introductory, 50. Summary of recommenda- 
tions, 52. Beginning certain studies earlier, 55. 
The high-school period, 57. Identity of instruc- 
tion, Better teachers. Postponing final choice of 
a course, 60-61. Uniformity, 61. Connection 
between high schools and colleges, Standard of 
professional schools. Adequate work for each 
subject. Reducing number of subjects, 63-64. 
Rational choice of subjects, 64. Analysis of 
the nature and importance of each leading sub- 
ject of study, 66. 



viii CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

IV. Educational Values 69 

Criterion, 69. Values, 69. Theory of equiva- 
lence, 72. Deviation from ideal courses, Self- 
activity. Interest, Apperception, Correlation, 
Coordination, Culture-e^chs, Concentration, 
Laws of association, 74-78. Pleasure, 78. 

V. Power as Related to Knowledge ... 80 

Attempt to distinguish between power and 
knowledge, 80. Illustrations and inferences, 81. 
Review of article on methods that make power, 
84. The recluse and the man of action, Zd. 
Exaggeration of power. Specializing too early. 
Kind of knowledge important. Specific and 
general power. Argument for higher education, 
86-89. Power to enjoy, Energy of character, 
89-91. 

VI. Moral Training 92 

Introductory, 92. Habit, 92. Leadership, 
95. Historic examples. Literature, 96-98. 
Precept, Objects for activity, 98-99. Duty, 
99. What the schools are doing, loi. 

VIL Can Virtue be Taught? .... 103 

Protagoras' view, 103. Ethical problem of 
secondary schools, 103. Analysis of impulses to 
action, 105. Relation of whole school curricu- 
lum to moral development, 107. Some specific 
ways of teaching practical ethics, 108. Interest, 
112. Romanticism, 113. Moral growth a growth 
in freedom, 115. 



CONTENTS. ix 



PAGE 



VIII. College and University . . . .116 

Summary of answers to inquiries, 116. The 
college and preparation, 117. Liberal educa- 
tion, 121. The college and active life, 124. 
Ethical ideals, 125. University standards, 127. 

IX. University Ideals 130 

Historical, 130. The State University, 132. 
Some university problems, 139. 

X. General Education Practical . . .145 

Practical bearing of all education, 145. World 
still demands liberal education, Esthetic and 
ideal elements, 148-15 1. 

ELEMENTS OF AN IDEAL LIFE. 

I. The Modern Gospel of Work , . • i5S 

Philosophy of work, 155. Some exemplars, 

161. Modem romance, 163. Work for others, 

165. The complete man, 167. Epic and 
idyl, 169. 

II. The Psychology of Faith . . . .172 

Question stated, 172. Some latest views of 
evolution, 175. Some grounds of faith, 176. 
Poetic insight, 183. The practical life, 184. 

HI. Evolution of a Personal Ideal . . .187 

Illustration and law of growth, 187. Station- 
ary ideals. Advance, 188-193. Means of de- 
velopment, 193. Be of to-day, 195. A creed, 
196. 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

IV. The Greek Virtues in Modern Application . 199 

Essential conditions for a satisfactory life, 
199. A sound body, 200. Courage, 201. 
Wisdom, 203. Justice, 205. Reverence, 207. 
The practical world, 209. 

V. The Student as Citizen 211 

Hebrew and Greek standards of citizenship, 
211. Each a part of the whole, 213. Respon- 
sibility of the scholar, 214. The student's obli- 
gation to the state, 216. Political standards, 
218. 

VI. Optimism AND Interest 221 

Ground and nature of interest, 221. Many 
interests, 222. Validity of instinct, 223. Moral 
grades, 225. Cultivation of interest, 227. Hap- 
piness, 230. Occupation, 232. 

VII. The Ethical and Esthetic Elements in 

Education 234 

Baccalaureate Day, 234. Courage and oppor- 
tunity, 234. " Laughter of the soul at itself," 
237. Attitude toward religion, 238. Love of 
art, 241. 

VIII. Progress as Realization .... 243 

Theme illustrated, 243. Individual history, 
244. Ideals and development, 245. Signifi- 
cance of higher emotional life, 250. Future of 
history and philosophy, 252. Realization, 253. 



EDUCATION. 



-r 



EDUCATION. 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 

For a thousand years before the Teuton appeared 
on the scene of civilization, the sages had been teach- 
ing in the agora of Athens and in the groves and 
gardens of its environs. There profound subjective 
philosophies were imparted to eager seekers for 
truth, and in the schools geometry, rhetoric, music, 
and gymnastics gave to the Attic youth a culture 
more refined than was ever possessed by any other 
people. The Athenians were familiar with a litera- 
ture which, for purity and elegance of style, was 
never surpassed. The Greeks believed with Plato, 
that " rhythm and harmony find their way into the 
secret places of the soul, on which they mightily 
fasten, bearing grace in their movements, and mak- 
ing the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated." 
There temples rose with stately column and sculp- 
tured frieze, and art fashioned marble in the images 
of the gods with a transcendent skill that gave an 
enduring name to many of its devotees. 

Meantime our ancestors were wandering westward 
through the forests of Europe, or were dwelling for 
a time in thatched huts on some fertile plain, or in 
some inviting glade or grove. But these children of 
the forest, almost savages, possessed the genius of 



^ 



4 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

progress, a power that turned to its own uses the 
civilization of the past, and almost wholly determined 
the character of modern history. They highly es- 
teemed independence and honor. In their estimate 
of woman they stood above the people of antiquity, 
and the home was held sacred. They possessed a 
practical and earnest spirit, an inborn dislike for 
mere formalism, and a regard for essentials that later 
developed in scientific discovery and independence 
of thought. The Teuton had a nature in which ideas 
took a firm root, and he had a profoundly religious 
spirit, impressible by great religious truths. He 
listened to the rustle of the oak leaves in his sacred 
groves, as did the Greeks at Dodona, and they whis- 
pered to him of mysterious powers that manifested 
themselves through nature. The scalds, the old 
Teutonic poets, sang in weird runic rhymes of the 
valorous deeds of their ancestors. 

How the Teutons hurled themselves against the 
barriers of the Roman Empire, how they overran the 
fields of Italy, how they absorbed and assimilated 
to their own nature what was best in the civilization 
of the ancients, how they formed the nuclei of the 
modern nations, how the renaissance of the ancient 
literature and art in Italy spread over Western Eu- 
rope and reached England, and later an offshoot was 
transplanted to American soil — these and similar 
themes constitute some of the most interesting por- 
tions of history. Not least important is the fact 
that the Roman world gave the Teutons the religion 
of Christ, that highest development of faith in things 
not seen, which, to the mind of many a searcher in 
rational theology, is a necessary part of a complete 
plan, to a belief in which we are led by a profoundly 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 5 

contemplative view of nature and human life. We 
study the past to know the present. Man finds 
himself only by a broad view of the world and of his- 
tory, together with a deep insight into his own be- 
ing. Our present institutions are understood better 
when viewed historically ; in the light of history our 
present opportunities and obligations assume fuller 
significance. -J- 

A 

By the mingling of two streams, one flowing from 
the sacred founts of Greece and Rome, the other 
springing from among the rocks and pines of the 
German forests, a current of civilization was formed 
which swept onward and broadened into a placid 
and powerful river. Let us view the character of 
the present period, and learn to value what has come 
down to us from the past — our heritage of institu- 
tions and ideas, a heritage derived from the two 
sources, Greco-Roman and Teutonic. •>-jL 

The independent, practical, investigating energy 
of the Teutonic character has made this an age of 
scientific discovery and material progress. The 
forces of nature are turned to man's uses. Science 
discovers and proclaims the laws of nature's pro- 
cesses, and evolution admits that, in view of every 
phenomenon, we are in the presence of an inscruta- 
ble energy that orders and sustains all nature's mani- 
festations. The ideas of the Christian religion, uni- 
versally received by the new peoples, in the course of 
centuries have forced themselves in their full mean- 
ing upon the minds of men, and they determine more 
than all else the altruistic spirit of the age. Altruism 
is the soul of Christianity ; it has become a forceful 
and practical idea, and it promises greater changes 



f 



6 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

in political and social conditions than the world has 
ever seen. The religious revolt of the sixteenth 
century is a Teutonic inheritance — a revolt which 
transmitted some evils, but which abjured formalism 
and based merit upon the essential, conscious atti- 
tude of man. If the impulse that grew into the 
revolution of the eighteenth century and led to 
political emancipation was not of Teutonic origin, it 
was received and cherished everywhere by Teutonic 
peoples, and was carried by them to permanent 
conclusions. The modern Teuton is found in his 
highest development in the intelligent American of 
to-day. The ancient Teuton caught up the torch of 
civilization, and in the fourteen centuries since has 
carried it far. It is, perhaps, a return kindly made 
by fate that the light of that torch was for many 
years a beacon to benighted Italy. The modern 
Teuton extends to her the hand of enlightened sym- 
pathy, and remembers in gratitude the great gift 
received from her in the early centuries. 

And we inherit from the ancients, those master 
minds that were the authors of great conceptions 
when the world was young. Greece was the Shake- 
speare of the ancient world. It transmuted all that 
it had received from the nations of the Orient into 
forms of surpassing genius, even as the great master 
of the Elizabethan period of our era turned all 
that he touched into precious metal. When the 
world was crude, and there were no great origi- 
nals to imitate, it meant much to create, and create 
so perfectly that many of the results have ever since 
been ideals for all peoples. Phidias and Apelles, 
Pericles and Demosthenes, Homer and Euripides, 
Herodotus and Xenophon, Aristides, Socrates and 



y- 



-f 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR, y 

Plato and Aristotle — artists, statesmen, orators, poets, 
historians, men great and just, philosophers ! Can 
we wonder that the glory of their names increases 
with time? They were men whom no truly inde- 
pendent worker ever surpassed. No wonder the soil 
of Greece is sacred, and that men of to-day go back 
in imagination across the chasm of ages and visit it 
with reverential spirit. No wonder we still go to the ---~ 
original sources for culture and inspiration. No won- 
der the great and noble men of Greece are still among 
the best examples for the instruction of youth. The "nC 
pass at Thermopylae, where perished the three hun- 
dred, the Parthenon, are hallowed by sacred memo- 
ries. The Greeks had a marvellous love for nature. 
They saw it instinct with life, and in fancy beheld 
some personal power moving in the zephyr, or flow- 
ing with the river, or dwelling in the growing tree. 
Their mythology has become the handmaid of lit- 
erature. Parnassus, Apollo and the Sacred Nine 
command almost a belief with our reverence. If the 
seats on the sacred mount are already filled with the 
great men of the past, at least we can sit at their 
feet. The study of the humanities has a peculiar 
value, because it develops distinctively human possi- 
bilities. Thought and language are mysteriously 
-^^onnected. One of the most noted philologists of 
the age claims that thought without language is im- 
possible. The use of language helps to develop con- 
cepts. Fine literature, with its thoughts, its beauty 
of expression, constructs, as it were, the best chan- . 
nels for original expression. Art strives for perfec- r" 
tion, cultivates ideals, refines and ennobles. It creates 
an understanding of all the ideals that may be in- 
cluded in the categories of the True, the Beautiful, 



-+• 



8 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

and the Good ; hence the interpretation of the 
aphorism of Goethe, *' The beautiful is greater 
than the good, for it includes the good and adds 
something to it." Art gives strength to the aspira- 
tions, and lends wings to the spirit. The study of 
the humanities is a grand means of real develop- 
ment. 

The present offers the student two sides of educa- 
tion — the modern and the classic, the sciences and 
the humanities. Ever since the Baconian method 
was given to the world the interest in science has 
steadily increased, until now there is danger of 
neglecting the classic side. Each side of education 
has its value ; either alone makes a one-sided man ; 
let neither be neglected. 

In this country to-day the student moves in the 
vanguard of progress ; he is heir to all that is best 
in the past, and his heritage makes for him oppor- 
tunities full of promise. — X 

AU the soul growth of our ancestors modifies the 
mechanism of our intellectual processes, and gives us 
minds that fall into rhythm with the march of ideas. 
We profit by all the past has done ; the active fac- 
tors in this age of freedom — intellectual, spiritual, 
and political — are multiplied by millions, and each 
profits by the efforts of all. Intellectual acquire- 
ment is a duty ; to be ignorant is to be behind the 
spirit of the time. There are problems yet to be 
solved ; there are duties to ourselves and the age. 
Every individual tendency, fitness, and inclination 
can be met by the diversity of occupations, of knowl- 
edge, and of fields of investigation. Men of moral 
stamina are still needed to stand for all that is best. 
New ideals are to be created that shall typify an age 



^ 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. g 

which yet lacks poetic expression. When we con- 
sider the evolution of man and of institutions, we 
see that we are very far from perfection, and that 
each period of history is a period of development. 
We read of the brutal traits of our ancestors, their 
ignorance, and their superstition, and we can still 
discover the same tendencies, only more refined and 
better controlled. Along the avenue of progress we 
march toward the high destiny of the race. Evolu- 
tion is the law both of Spencer and of Hegel. Every 
struggle of an earnest soul gives impetus to the 
movement. 

A Shakespeare, reared on the steppes of Central 
Asia, among the Tartar hordes of Genghis Khan, 
would have been a savage — a poetic savage, perhaps, 
but still a savage — bloodthirsty, restless, and wild. 
Born of a primitive race, in some sunny clime, he 
would have looked dreamily upon the world and life, 
somewhat as an animal of the forest ; he would have 
fed on the spontaneous products of nature, and have 
reposed under the shadow of his palm tree. Shake- 
speare of England, by a long process of education, 
gained the ideas of his age and the culture of the 
great civilizations of the past. His education and the 
forceful ideas of a period of thought and reformation 
and investigation stimulated the distinctively human 
intelligence, and awakened subjective analysis and 
poetic fancy, and he made true pictures of human char- 
acter, world types, in history, tragedy, and comedy. 
Education enables man to begin real life where the 
previous age left off. It is an inherited capital. L 
Ideas, fancies, principles, laws, discoveries, experience 
from failures, which were the work of centuries, are 



lO EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

furnished ready at hand as tools for the intellectual 
workman. The present is understood in the light of 
history ; the methods of investigating nature are 
"^ transmitted. The growth of the race is epitomized 
in the individual. -/- 
\~ Let us look at the sphere of education. Here is 
the world of infinite variety, form, and color. The 
savage looks upon it with superstitious wonder, and, 
perhaps, with a kind of sensuous enjoyment. He 
knows not how to wield nature to practical ends. 
But the book of science is opened to him through 
education. He learns the secrets of nature's labora- 
tory and, as with magic wand, he marshals the atoms 
and causes new forms of matter to appear for his uses. 
He learns the manifestations and transmutations of 
nature's forces, and he trains them to obey his will 
and do his work. He observes how, under the influ- 
ence of a distinct order of forces, organic forms rise 
on the face of nature and develop into higher and 
higher classes, and, incidentally, he learns the uses of 
vegetable products. He knows the laws of number; 
commodities, structures, and forces are quantitatively 
estimated, and material progress becomes possible. 
He traces the history of nations and understands the 
problems of the present. He catches the inspiration 
of the geniuses of literature, and he rises to a level 
with the great minds of the earth ; he becomes a 
creature of ideas, sentiments, aspirations, and ideals, 
instead of remaining a mere animal. He learns the 
languages of cultured peoples, and gets at their inner 
life ; learns their concepts, the polish of their expres- 
sion, and becomes more enlightened and refined. He 
studies the subjective side of man, that which is a 
mirror of all that is objective, and he understands his 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. II 

own powers and possibilities, and the laws of human 
growth. He studies philosophy, and he stands face 
to face with the ultimate conceptions of creation and 
gains a basis for his thought and conduct. This is a 
practical view, and pertains to the making of a useful 
and strong man — master over the forces of nature, 
able to use ideas for practical ends, and capable of 
continuous growth. --^ 

^ But knowledge as such, and its use for manhood 
and happiness, are often underestimated. To know 
the processes and history of inorganic nature, to trace 
the growth of worlds and know their movements, and 
number the starry hosts, to study the structure and 
development of all organic life, to know the infallible 
laws of mathematics, to live amid the deeds of men 
of all ages, to imbibe their richest thoughts, to stand 
in presence of the problems of the infinite, make a 
mere animal man almost a god, direct him toward the 
realization of the great possibilities of his being. 
Imagine a man born in a desert land, and shut in by 
the walls of a tent from the glories of nature. Im- 
agine him to have matured in body with no thought 
or language other than pertaining to the needs of 
physical existence. Imagine him, since we may im- 
agine the impossible, to have a fully developed power 
for intellectual grasp and emotional life. Then open 
up to him the beauty of the forest, the poetry of the 
sea, the grandeur of the mountains, and the sublimity 
of the starry heavens ; let him read the secrets of 
nature ; present to him the writings of men whose 
lives have been enriched by their own labor, and 
whose faces radiate an almost divine expression born 
of good thoughts ; reveal to him the glowing concepts 
that find expression through the chisel or brush of 



12 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

the artist, and give him a view from the summit of 
philosophy. Would he not look upon nature as a 
marvellous temple of infinite proportions, adorned 
with priceless gems and frescoed with master hand ? 
Would he not regard art and thought as divinely in- 
spired ? And this picture is hardly overdrawn ; such 
a contrast, only less in degree, lies between the 
vicious, ignorant boor, given to animal pleasures, and 
the scholar. Learning draws aside the tent folds and 
reveals the wonders of the temple. Man must have 
enjoyment ; if not intellectual, then it will be sensuous 
and degrading. Here is an enjoyment that does not 
pall, a stimulus that does not react, a gratification that 
ennobles. ' "/" 

Moreover, education trains the powers through 
knowledge. The power to observe accurately the 
world of beauty and wonder ; the power to recombine 
and modify in infinite kaleidoscopic forms the per- 
cepts and images of the mind, making possible all 
progress ; the power to elaborate, verify, and general- 
ize ; the power to feel the greatness of truth, the 
rhythms and harmonies of the world and the beauty 
of its forms ; the power to perceive and feel the right ; 
the power to guide one's self in pursuit of the best — 
these are worth more than mere practical acquisitions 
and mere knowledge, for they make possible all ac- 
quisition and growth and enjoyment. 
-/-" The thoughtless person who argues against educa- 
tion little knows how much he and all men are in- 
debted to it. The demand for general intelligence is 
increasing, and the capabilities of the race for knowl- 
edge are greater with each educated generation, -r 
Earnest men are endeavoring to make a degree of 
culture almost universal, as is shown by the " Chau- 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 



n 



tauqua Scheme " and the plan of '' University Exten- 
sion." Education adheres less rigidly to the old lines, 
and men can gain a more purely English training, in- 
cluding scientific preparation for industrial and com- 
mercial pursuits. These schemes are useful because 
they tend to popularize education, and they reach a 
class which would not be reached by the usual courses 
of study. 

/ But there is danger of departing from the ideal 
type of education — education for general training 
and knowledge and manhood. Not that traditional 
courses must be rigidly adhered to, for a new field of 
learning has been opened in which may be acquired 
a knowledge of material nature. But, in the zeal for 
the modern side of education, there is danger of 
neglecting the ancient, the classic side, the humani- 
ties. Language and literature, history and philos- 
ophy and art, since they train expression and culti- 
vate ideals, and teach the motives of men and the 
nature and destiny of the human race, since they 
deal with the spiritual more than with the material, 
since they belong exclusively to man, since they 
stimulate the activity of divine powers and instincts, 
since they are peculiarly useful as mental gymnastics, 
since they are culturing and refining — they still have 
and always will have a high value in ideal education. 
The ancient side and the modern side should fairly 
share the honors in a college course. ^ 

The arguments for so-called practical education are 
fallacious, whenever the nature, time, and possibilities 
of the pupil will enable him to develop anything 
more than the bread-winning capabilities. When 
one knows the pure mathematics, his knowledge can 
be applied in the art of bookkeeping with a mini- 



-i 



14 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

mum effort. Bookkeeping is a mere incident in the 
line of mathematical work. A year in a school of 
general education, even to the prospective clerk or 
merchant, should be worth ten times as much as a 
year spent in the practice of mechanical processes. 
United States history is valuable to an American 
youth, but, while with one view America is in the 
forefront of progress, there is another view in which 
our century of history is only an incident in the 
march of events. The present can be understood 
only historically, and the elements of our civilization 
should be known in the light of the world's history. 
Not only should we adhere to our faith in 
university education, but we can find reasons for 
raising the standard of a part of university work. 
Even now, no student should receive a professional 
degree who has not previously obtained at least a 
complete high-school education ; and the time may 
come when, in all institutions, at least two years of 
college life will be required as a basis for a doctor's 
or a lawyer's degree. Graduate courses have become 
a prominent feature of many American universities, 
and year by year larger numbers of students seek 
higher degrees. As the race advances, the prepara- 
tion for active life will necessarily enlarge. 

Many know but little of the forces that move the 
world. Material progress does not make the spirit 
of the age, but the spirit of the age makes material 
progress. The outward works of man are a result of 
the promptings of the inner spirit. It is the spirit of 
a nation that wins battles, the spirit of a nation that 
makes inventions. Take away ideals and the world 
would be inert. It is spirit that makes the difference 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 



15 



between the American soldier fighting for his liberty 
and the Hessian hireling or the old Italian condottieri 
who played at war for the highest bidder. HereTs" 
the difference between a slave and a freeman, be- 
tween the oppressed of old countries and the free 
American. / 

^ Ideas move the world. It is related that in the • 
second Messenian war the Spartans, obeying the jf 
Delphic oracle, sent to Athens for a leader, and the j ; 
Athenians in contempt sent them a lame school- , ' 
master. But the schoolmaster had within him the 
spirit of song, and he so inspired the Spartans that j 
they finally gained the victory) In the contests /*^ 
with England, during the time of the Edwards, the 
national spirit of Wales was aroused and sustained 
by the songs of her bards. The Marseillaise Hymn 
helped to keep alive the fire on the altar of French 
liberty. It is only as man has hope, aspirations, 
courage, that he acts, and, in order to progress, he 
must act towards ideals. The mind imagines higher 
things to be attained, and endeavor follows. 

Natural features of sea or forest or mountain or 
desert have something to do with the character and 
ideas of a people ; so, also, the material wealth in 
lands and buildings. But to understand the great 
movements of history, we must look at the great 
psychical factors. Our heritage of ideas, our love of 
liberty, our Puritan standards, our hatred of tyranny, 
our independence of spirit, are strong characteristics 
that make us a distinctive and progressive people. 
It was an idea that gave England her Magna Charta ; 
an idea that made us a free and independent nation ; 
an idea that preserved our Union. 

A man makes a labor-saving invention, and the 



-f 



1 6 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

ease and luxury of physical living are increased, and 
men bless the inventor and proclaim that the prac- 
tical man alone is of use to the world. Another gives 
to the world a thought — a great work of art, a song, 
or a philosophy — and it takes possession of men and 
becomes an incentive to noble living, and the race 
has truly progressed. Let the spirit that possesses 
our people die out and all material prosperity would 
perish. 

In primitive times, when men lived in caves, and, 
as Charles Lamb humorously says, went to bed early 
because they had nothing else to do, and grumbled at 
each other, and, in the absence of candles,were obliged 
to feel of their comrades' faces to catch the smile 
of appreciation at their jokes — then, if a great man 
had a thought, he related it to his neighbor, and his 
neighbor told it to a friend, and it did good. Later, 
a great man had a thought, and he wrought it out 
laboriously on a parchment and loaned it to his 
neighbor, and he sent it to a friend, and many came, 
sometimes from far, to read it, and it did more 
good. In our age a great man had a thought and he 
printed it in a book, and thousands read it, and it 
was translated into many tongues, and his words be- 
came household words, and the race had taken a 
step forward. The world advances more rapidly to- 
day because ideas spread with such facility. ~4- 

What is called contemptuously " book learning,' 
the education of young men in the schools, helps to 
preserve, increase, make useful, and transmit all the 
discoveries and the best thoughts of past genera- 
tions. The student is likely to be a man of ideas, of 
ideals, and hence he is the great power of the 
world. 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 



17 



The man of affairs says to the ideal man : There is 
nothing of value but railroads, houses, inventions, 
and creature comforts. Of what use are your his- 
tory, poetry, philosophy, and stuff? The scholar 
replies : Every man contributes something to the 
common good. I am improved by your practical 
view and skill, and you are unconsciously benefited 
by my ideas. You live, without knowing it, in an at- 
mosphere of ideas, and the practical men of to-day 
breathe it in and are inspired and stimulated by it. 
Without the atmosphere of ideas, your inventions 
and material progress would not be. 

The culture of the ancients directly encourages 
ideal standards. It was a happy thought of the 
Greek that personified principles and ideas, that cre- 
ated muses to preside over the forms of literature. 
Let us deify our best ideals and set up altars for 
their worship. 

Men laugh at the nonsense of poetry and ideal 
standards, but thoughtful men pity them. I remem- 
ber listening some years since to a prominent lec- 
turer in a large town. He began with a prelude, in 
which with masterly strokes he pictured the admir- 
able location of the city, its relation to the en- 
vironing regions, the whole country, and the world, 
its probable growth, its material promise, and its 
opportunity for social, intellectual, and moral de- 
velopment, and he pointed to the picture as an 
inspiration for young men. Then he entered upon 
his main theme, *' Proofs of Immortality." As with 
dramatic distinctness he made one point after an- 
other, he held his vast audience breathless and spell- 
bound. The next morning I took up my paper at 
the breakfast table and noted the glaring headlines 



1 8 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

and details of robberies, murders, and domestic 
scandals, while, in an obscure corner, expressed in 
a contemptuous manner, were a dozen lines upon 
the magnificent oratory and supreme themes of the 
evening before. Is there not room for the scholar 
with his ideals ? 

Rudyard Kipling, that Englishman in a strange 
oriental garb, visited one of the great and prosper- 
ous cities of our country. He was met by a com- 
mittee of citizens and shown the glory of the town. 
They gave him the height of their blocks, the cost of 
their palace hotels, and the extent of their stock- 
yards, expecting him to express wonder and admira- 
tion. He surprised them by exclaiming, '' Gentle- 
men, are these things so ? Then, indeed, I am sorry 
for you ; " and he called them barbarians, savages, 
because they gloried in their material possessions, 
and said nothing of the morals of the city, nothing 
of her great men, nothing of her government, her 
charities, and her art. He called them barbarians 
because they valued their adornments, not for the art 
in them, but for their cost in dollars. A lecturer not 
long ago said derisively that of all the Athenians who 
listened with rapt attention to the orations of De- 
mosthenes, probably not one had a pin or a button for 
his cloak. It would be a curious problem to weigh a 
few orations of Demosthenes against pins and but- 
tons. It is said of men of olden time that they con- 
spired to build themselves up into heaven by using 
materials of earth, and began to erect a lofty tower, but 
the Almighty, seeing the futility of their endeavor, 
thwarted their attempt at its inception, and thus 
showed that men could never ascend to the heavens 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 



19 



by any material means. It is a wonderful invention, 
but no flying machine will ever give wings to the 
spirit. There is a material and a spiritual side to the 
world, and the spiritual can never be enhanced by 
the material. The lower animals, through their in- 
stincts, perform material feats often surpassing the 
skill of man. For his purpose the beaver can build 
a better dam than man ; no skill of man can make 
honey for the bee. That which distinguishes man is 
his manhood, his thought, his ideals, his spirituality. 
Y~ There is a glory of the present and a glory of the 
past. The glory of the past was its literature, its art, 
its examples of greatness. Let us retain the glory 
of the ancient civilization and add to it the marvel- 
lous scientific and practical spirit of the present. 
Then shall we have a civilization surpassing any pre- 
vious one. Let us not only tunnel our mountains for 
outlets to our great transcontinental railway sys- 
tems, but let us also find among our mountain 
ranges, and domes, and canons, some sacred grot- 
toes. Let us not only explore our peaks for gold 
and silver, but find some Parnassus, sacred to the 
Muses, whom we shall learn to invoke not in vain. >y^ 

Shall we venture to characterize the American 
student of the near future? He will hardly be a 
recluse, nor will he wholly neglect the body for the 
culture of the mind. He will be a man of the world, 
a man of business ; on the one hand, not disregard- 
ing the uses of wealth, and, on the other, not finding 
material possessions and sensuous enjoyment the 
better part of life. He will be an influence in poli- 
tics and in the solution of all social problems. His 
ideals will be viewed somewhat in the light of their 



20 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

practicality. H^ will know the laws of mental growth 
in order to use them, and will find the avenues of 
approach to men's motives. His religion will add 
more of work to faith. He will secure a high growth 
of self by regarding the welfare of others, instead of 
worshipping exclusively at the shrine of his own de- 
velopment. The scientific knowledge of nature's 
materials and forces, and the skill to use them, will 
invite a large class of minds. In brief, the coming 
student will take on more of the traits of the ideal 
man of affairs. 

But, while we may not expect a revival of the 
almost romantic life of the early literary clubs of 
London, there will be many a group devoted to the 
enjoyment of thought and beauty in literature. If 
no Socrates shall walk the streets proclaiming his 
wisdom on the corners, at imminent risk from cable 
cars and policemen, there will be a philosophy, dis- 
seminated through the press of the coming century, 
which will still strive to reach beyond the processes 
of nature to the unknown cause, will reexamine 
those conceptions of the Absolute, which are thought 
to stand the test when applied to explain the prob- 
lems of human life. If no Diogenes shall be found 
with his lantern at noontide, seeking, as it were, in a 
microscopic way, the honest man which the brilliant 
luminary failed to reveal, many a one, living cour- 
ageously his principles and convictions, will endeavor 
by precept and example to make an age of honest 
men who will find the golden rule in the necessities 
of human intercourse, as well as in the concepts of 
ethics and the teaching of religion. 

The student owes much to the world. The ideal 
scholar is too intelligent to be prejudiced, one-sided, 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 2 1 

or superstitious. He should avoid the path of the 
poHtical demagogue. He should know the force of 
ideas and the value of ideals ; he should be too wise 
to fall into the slough of pure materialism. 

The literature of the future will not try the bold, 
metaphorical flights of Shakespeare, but there will 
be a literature that will show the poetry of the new 
ideas. Whatever philosophy finally becomes the 
prevalent one, there are certain transcendental con- 
ceptions, from which the human mind cannot escape, 
that will still inspire poetry. There must always be 
men who will open their eyes to the wonders of the 
world and of human existence — who must know that 
any, the commonest, substance is a mystery, the key 
to which would unlock the secrets of the universe. 
The beauty of the starry heavens will ever be tran- 
scendent ; every natural scene and object remains 
a surpassing work of art ; life is filled with tragedy 
and comedy, and the possibilities of human exist- 
ence are as sublime as the eternal heights and depths. 
Such conceptions beget a poetry which rises to a 
faith above reason ; that instinctively looks upon the 
fact of creation and of existence as sublime and full 
of promise, and clings to a belief, however vague, in 
the ultimate grand outcome for the individual. The 
right view of the world is essentially poetic, and the 
truest poetry includes faith and reverence. It is the 
privilege of the earnest and profound scholar to 
know that literature refines, that philosophy ennobles, 
that religion purifies, that ideals inspire, and that 
the world can be explained in its highest meaning 
only by the conception of a personal God. 

Notwithstanding its practical tendencies, this cen- 



22 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

tury is not wanting in the highest Hterary power. It 
has given us the universal insight and sympathy of 
Goethe, whose writings Carlyle describes as * A 
Thousand-voiced Melody of Wisdom." He thus 
continues, " So did Goethe catch the Music of the 
Universe, and unfold it into clearness, and, in au- 
thentic celestial tones, bring it home to the hearts 
of men." 

This century has revealed the grandeur of meta- 
physical thought through Hegel, and found a won- 
derful expounder of science in Spencer. Each an 
exponent of a great philosophy, both giants in men- 
tal grasp, they greatly influence the thought of the 
age, and become co-workers in the investigation of 
many-sided truth. 

Next stands Carlyle, in the midst of this mechani- 
cal and seemingly unpoetic age, and proclaims it an 
age of romance ; in inspired words teaches the beauty 
of the genuine, the sublimity of creation, the gran- 
deur of human life. Wordsworth, Nature's priest, 
interprets her forms and moods with finest insight, 
and finds them expressive of divine thought. He 
looks quite through material forms and feels 

" A sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air. 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.** 

Our own Emerson to this generation quaintly says, 
'* Hitch your wagon to a star," and thousands strive 
to rise superior to occupation, rank, and habit into 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 



23 



the dignity of manhood — to rise above the clouds of 
sorrow and disappointment, and bathe in the pure 
sunlight. The spiritual beauty of his face, the calm 
dignity of his life will live in the memory of men 
and add to the force of his writings. 
Longfellow has said, 

" Look, then, into thine heart, and write." 

Every aspiration, every care and sorrow, every mood 
and sentiment, finds in him a true sympathy ; he 
stands foremost, not as a genius of the intellect, but 
as a genius of the heart. How often he enters our 
homes, sits at our firesides, touches the sweetest, 
tenderest chords of the lyre, awakens the purest 
aspirations of our being. 

Then comes Dickens, and tells us that fiction may 
have a high and noble mission ; that it may teach 
love, benevolence, and charity ; that it may promote 
cheerfulness and contentment ; that it may expose 
injustice and defend truth and right. 

All these, each a master in his field, are powerful 
in their influence ; but beyond this fact is the more 
significant one that they index some of the better 
tendencies of the century. Never before were so 
many fields of thought represented ; never did any 
possess masters of greater skill. We may hope that, 
even in the midst of this period of material prosperity, 
invention, and scientific research, the spiritual side of 
man's nature will ultimately gain new strength, and 
thought a deeper insight. 

With our exact thought and practical energy, is 
there not danger of losing all the romance which 
clothes human existence with beauty and hope? 



24 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

The gods are banished from Olympus ; Helicon is no 
longer sacred to the Muses ; Egeria has dissolved 
into a fountain of tears ; the Dryads have fled from the 
sacred oaks ; the elves no longer flit in the sunbeams ; 
Odin lies buried beneath the ruins of Walhalla ; 
'' Pan is dead." That wealth of imagination which 
characterized the Greek, enabled him to personify 
the powers that rolled in the flood or sighed in the 
breeze, has passed away. We would turn Parnassus 
into a stone quarry and hew the homes of the Dryads 
into merchantable lumber. The spear of chivalry is 
broken in the lists by the implements of the mechanic, 
the tourney is converted into a fair. Romance is for 
a time clouded by the smoke of manufactories. 

But a seer has arisen, who finds in remotest places 
and in humblest life the essence of romance. Carlyle 
is our true poet and we do well to comprehend his 
meaning. To his mind we have but to paint the 
meanest object in its actual truth and the picture is 
a poem. Romance exists in reality. " The thing 
that is, what can be so wonderful ? " " In our own 
poor Nineteenth Century ... he has witnessed 
overhead the infinite deep, with lesser and greater 
lights, bright-rolling, silent-beaming, hurled forth by 
the hand of God ; around him and under his feet 
the wonderfuUest earth, with her winter snow storms 
and summer spice airs, and (unaccountablest of all) 
himself standing there. He stood in the lapse of 
Time ; he saw eternity behind him and before him." 
I cannot lead you to the end of that wonderful 
passage, but it is worth the devotion of solitude. 

We have left the superstitions of the past, but the 
beauty of mythology is transmuted into the glory 
of truth. In the valley of Chamounix, Coleridge 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 



25 



sang for us a grander hymn than any ancient epic, 
Wordsworth has read the promise of immortality in 
a humble flower, science reveals to us the sublimity 
of creation. Romance has not passed away ; if we 
will but look nature becomes transparent and we see 
through to Nature's God. 

Many good men fear the results of independent 
thought and scientific research, but such fear is the 
outgrowth of narrow views. Every pioneer in an 
unexplored field should be welcomed. The Darwins 
and the Spencers are doing a grand work. Only the 
widest investigation can possibly affirm the truth of 
any belief. Let men doubt their instincts and go 
forth to seek a foundation for truth. Let them 
trace the evolution of organized being from the 
simplest elements. Let them resolve the sun and 
planets and all the v/onderful manifestations of force 
into nebulae and heat. Let investigation seek every 
nook and corner penetrable by human knowledge. 
All this will but show the processes and the wonders 
of creation without revealing the cause or end. 

The intellect of man, for a time divorced from the 
warm instincts of his being, sent forth into chill and 
rayless regions of discovery, having performed its 
mission, will return and speak to the human soul in 
startling, welcome accents : Far and wide I have 
sought a basis for truth and found it not. Any phi- 
losophy that recognizes no God is false. Search your 
inner consciousness. You are yourself God's highest 
expression of truth. You see beauty in the flower, 
glory in the heavens. You have human love and sym- 
pathy, divine aspirations. Life to you is nothing 
without aim and hope. Trust your higher instincts. 



26 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

The ancient Romans read omens in the flight of 
birds, and ordered great events by these supposed 
revelations of the deities. In our day, a Bryant has 
watched by fountain and grove for the revelations of 
God, and has read in the flight of a " Waterfowl " a 
deeper augury than any ancient priest, for it relates 
not to political events, but to an eternal truth, im- 
planted in the breast and confirming the hope of 
man. 

" There is a power whose care 

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — 
The desert and illimitable air — 
Lone wandering but not lost. 

" Thou'rt gone, the abyss of Heaven 

Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet on my heart 
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 

*' He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
"Will lead my steps aright." 

The student is asked to take a view from the 
height to which he has already attained, and catch 
a glimpse here and there of the world, of history, and 
of the meaning of human life. The fuller significance 
of what appears in the fair field of learning will come 
with maturer years. It is not enough for the 
student to enjoy selfishly his knowledge and power ; 
he should be a mediator between his capabilities and 
his opportunities. It is one thing to have power, 
another to use it. The mighty engine may have 
within it the potency of great work, but it may stand 
idle forever unless the proper means are employed to 
utilize it. Let the student convert his power into 



HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR. 2/ 

active energy, and study the best ways of making it 
tell for the highest usefulness. Education but pre- 
pares to enter the great school of life, and that 
school should be a means of continuous develop- 
ment towards greater power and higher character, 
and knowledge and usefulness. Progress is the con- 
dition of life ; to stand still is to decay. One with a 
progressive spirit gains a little day by day and year 
by year, and in the sum of years there will be a large 
aggregate. Employ well the differentials of time, 
then integrate, and what is the result ? 

An old and honored college instructor was accus- 
tomed to say, '' Education is valuable, but good 
character is indispensable," and the force of this 
truth grows upon me with every year of experience. 
I well remember a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher 
upon the theme " Upbuilding," in which he spent 
two hours in an earnest and eloquent appeal, espe- 
cially to the young, to thrust down the lower nature 
and cultivate the nobler instincts, and thus evolve to 
higher planes. 

Happy is he who can keep the buoyancy and 
freshness and hope of early years. The " vision 
splendid," which appears to the eye of youth, too 
often may '' fade into the hght of common day." 
Too often Wordsworth's lines become a prophecy, 
but let them be a warning : 

" Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, 
And custom lie upon thee with a weight, 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life." 

Age should be the time of rich fruition. Not long 
since the Rev. William R. Alger, on his visit to Den- 
ver, after an absence of a dozen years, addressed a 



28 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

congregation of his old friends, and among other 
things he spoke of his impressions when he first ap- 
proached these grand mountains. It was at set of 
sun, and, as he looked away over the plains, he be- 
held on an elevation a thousand cattle, and in the 
glory of the departing day they seemed to him like 
*' golden cattle pasturing in the azure and feeding on 
the blue." Upon his last visit he again approached 
these scenes at the close of day, and his impressions 
were as vivid as in earlier years ; his enjoyment in 
life was deeper, his faith was stronger, and his hope 
brighter. There is no need to grow old in spirit ; it 
is only the dead soul that wholly loses the hope and 
the joy of youth. 

There are three grand categories, not always under- 
stood by those who carelessly name them — the True, 
the Beautiful, and the Good. May the thoughts 
and deeds which give character to life be such as to 
fall within this trinity of perfect ideals. 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 
AND LIFE. 

It is the calm judgment of history that, in artistic, 
Hterary, and philosophical development, the world 
shows, relatively, nothing comparable to the Golden 
Age of Greece. Attica was the Shakespeare of the 
Ancient World. As the Bard of Avon gathered the 
material of legend, romance, and history, and crowned 
the intellectual activity of the Elizabethan Age with 
results of enduring value, so the leading city of Greece 
centred in herself many influences of the Orient, and, 
in a period of great intellectual awakening under fa- 
vorable conditions, became the genius that produced 
results of surpassing power and beauty. The Greeks 
created when European civilization was young, and 
as yet there was little of the ideal that, in the Attic 
Period, blossomed into the conceptions of the True, 
the Beautiful, and the Good. 

In any other period never has so great a master as 
Socrates found so great a pupil as Plato ; never has 
so great a master as Plato encountered so great a 
pupil as Aristotle. Each pupil grasped and enlarged 
upon the mighty work of his instructor. 

The world still wonders how any age could be- 
come so suddenly and highly creative. Like the 
century plant, the Greek race seemed to have been 
accumulating, through a long period, power for a 
quick and startling development. The thoughtful 



30 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



historian enumerates many favoring conditions. The 
Greeks as a race were active, eager for knowledge, 
and had a capiicity for healthy ideal conceptions. 
The beneficent climate brought them in contact with 
nature, and the peculiar charm of their sky, air, 
mountains, and sea filled them with a sense of wonder 
and a sense of beauty. We may also mention the 
stimulus of their intercourse with their own colonies 
and with other peoples ; their religion, which con- 
tained the germs of ethical and philosophical thought, 
and was favorable to freedom of view ; the respect 
for law that sought for the rules of the state and 
for individual conduct a foundation in permanent 
principles. 

Socrates is a more favorite theme than Plato, partly 
because he is the first of the three heroic figures that 
mark the beginning of philosophy. Then his name 
is surrounded with a halo that was constituted by the 
events of Athens' greatest period of fame. He lived 
just after the glory of victory over the Persian inva- 
ders had stimulated the Greek pride and every ac- 
tivity that is born of pride and hope. He lived in the 
period of Athenian supremacy and was contemporary 
with Phidias, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, 
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Pericles. 

Plato, on the contrary, beheld the beginning of the 
misfortunes of Attica and of the decay of Greece. 
It was the period of the Peloponnesian Wars, of the 
Spartan and theTheban Supremacy. It was the time 
of the Thirty Tyrants and of the restored Democracy. 
But while the time of Plato was not that of the 
greatest national glory, it permitted the free develop- 
ment of philosophical thought which later culminated 
in Aristotle. 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 



31 



Socrates, with earnestness of soul, with contempt 
for the extreme democratic spirit of his time and the 
growing disregard of divine and human law, with 
contempt for the Sophists, whose teachings were no 
higher than prudential preparation for practical life 
and cultivation of the morals and manners of a Lord 
Chesterfield, devoted himself to exposing the igno- 
rance and false reasoning of the day and to the search 
for truth, setting up for his ideal the Supreme Good 
which included the True and the Beautiful. He, 
however, was practical in that he taught that all good 
was good for something ; whatever was ideal was to 
be applied in real life, and he was a notable example 
of closely following ideals with practical action. 
*' Know thyself " was his maxim, and, in knowing 
thyself, know the good and follow it. 

Socrates is the practical man, Plato the idealist and 
literary man, Aristotle the scientific man. Socrates 
left us no writings, and, while Plato in his works uses 
Socrates as his chief interlocutor, the dialogues are 
to be regarded as expressing Socrates* philosophy as 
changed and enlarged by the views of Plato. Xeno- 
phon's " Memorabilia" is the source of more nearly 
accurate views of the life and teachings of Socrates. 

Plato uses Socrates' method of induction and exact 
definition to reach the truth aimed at. Many of the 
scenes are like plays, some of which would take on a 
stage setting, with characters that are very much alive 
and very human. Although in pursuit of the most seri- 
ous subjects, a dramatic tone runs through the discus- 
sions. In the first book of the " Republic," Thrasym- 
achus in argument gets angry, grows red in the face, 
and fairly roars his views at Socrates, who pretends to 
be panic-stricken at his looks. Later Thrasymachus 



32 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



asks, " I want to know, Socrates, whether you have a 
nurse." To Socrates' look of astonished inquiry he 
more than intimates that the philosopher is too 
childish to go about unattended. Many of the dia- 
logues are in part historical facts. The characters are 
the neighbors and friends or intellectual antagonists 
of the philosopher. The doctrines he combats are 
doctrines of the day, the scenes are real and in or 
about Athens. The tyranny he hates and the ex- 
treme democracy he satirizes are forms of government 
whose evils he has observed, and from which he has 
suffered. You read the dialogues, follow their 
thought, get into their spirit, and you are brought in 
touch with the great, throbbing life of the Athenian 
commonwealth. A few dialogues, carefully read, are 
worth a hundred volumes of the commentators. 

It is related that at a certain time Socrates dreamed 
he saw a young swan perched on his knee. Soon it 
gained strength of wing and flew away, singing a sweet 
song. The next day Plato appeared and became the 
intimate pupil of Socrates. This is one of many 
myths, later invented to enlarge the halo of a great 
name. It was said that Plato was the son of Apollo 
and that the bees of Hymettus fed him with honey, 
giving him the power of sweet speech. Myths aside, 
the chance that made Plato the intimate friend and 
disciple of Socrates became of vast significance to 
the future history of philosophy. Plato was of aristo- 
cratic parentage ; he showed in his youth a poetic 
temperament, which was later displayed in the dra- 
matic art of his writings. After the death of Socrates 
in 399 B. c, he travelled and resided at various courts. 
At the age of forty he returned to Athens and opened 



1 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 



33 



his school in the Gymnasium of the Academy, where 
with one or two intervals he taught for a period of 
forty years. Aristotle was for twenty years his pupil, 
and there are many interesting accounts of the rela- 
tion between pupil and master. 

Plato had in him somewhat of the Puritan, while 
Aristotle was more a man of the world, and we may 
suppose that he often maintained his opinions with 
his customary sarcastic smile. Reoffended the more 
austere tastes of his master by nicety of dress, care of 
his shoes, display of finger rings, and a dudish cut of his 
hair. Contemporaries speak of Plato with admiration 
for his intellect and reverence for the beauty of his 
character, which was " elevated in Olympian cheerful- 
ness above the world of change and decay." 

In our purpose to touch upon some points of 
Plato's doctrines, we are treating of a transcendent 
genius whose work has profoundly affected the 
thought of the world. Platonism reappears as Neo- 
Platonism in the second and third centuries of our 
era ; is largely adopted in its new form a century 
later by St. Augustine, the great expounder of Chris- 
tianity and teacher of the Middle Ages ; arises again 
in the seventeenth century proclaiming that moral 
law is written in fixed characters in every rational 
mind ; culminates in the grand idealism of Schelling 
and Hegel ; is transmitted to-day in the magnificent 
idealistic ethics of such men as Caird, Green, and 
Bradley ; gives the cardinal virtues to Christianity ; 
furnishes a broad and inspiring ethical code for the 
present ; speaks with an inspiration that largely meets 
the approval of the Christian world ; inspired the 
Utopia and the New Atlantis and all ideal schemes 
of government and society ; was, following Socrates, 

3 



34 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



the father of the inductive method ; became the 
starting point for the scientific study of nature and 
psychology in the eleventh century ; was a large ele- 
ment in the humanistic movement, which at the close 
of the middle ages created modern natural science ; 
created conceptions which, developing down through 
the centuries in two diverging lines, indirectly found 
highest expression in the idealism of Hegel and the 
evolution of Spencer, and is likely to furnish in broad 
outlines, especially as presented by Aristotle, ground 
for the reconciliation of the opposite poles of philoso- 
phy in a spiritual evolution. 

What was Plato's central idea? It was the exist- 
ence of fixed principles in the universe, principles 
realized in the consciousness of man, through pur- 
suit of knowledge. Socrates aimed at a permanent 
ground for ethical wisdom in a time when the old 
foundations of conduct and of divine and human 
law were shaken. He was the progenitor of the in- 
ductive method, in that he sought in numerous in- 
stances and opinions the essential common ground 
or principle, and aimed at exact definition. The 
class concept, general notion, universal truth, was 
the object of his search. And we find him, for in- 
stance, in Plato, tracing through the ten books of the 
" Republic " the essential character of justice. Plato, 
following Socrates, sought a foundation for ethical 
conceptions in a metaphysical theory, the Doctrine 
of Ideas, a magnificent illustration of the truth that 
speculative philosophy grows out of man's earnest 
desire to know why he is here, and what is the mean- 
ing of his moral nature. 

It will help much any view in the field of philoso- 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 



35 



phy to keep uppermost the thought of distinct 
classes, types, or kinds of things in nature ; the 
thought of the corresponding class concepts, general 
notions or universals in the human mind ; and the 
thought of original ideas in the mind of God, as con- 
stituting principles or laws or modes of action in 
nature. This is not a world of chaotic chance, it is a 
world of rational and progressive order, and we are 
compelled to seek for the architecture an architect 
and a plan embodying rational ideas. Plato's ideas 
are eternal entities existing neither in nature nor in 
the mind of God, but nevertheless the archetypes, 
forms, or patterns after which every kind of things to 
which may be applied a common name was fashioned. 
Plato here held in an imperfect way the mighty truth 
of all philosophy, and the '^ Ideas " have reappeared in 
many guises, — as the forms or essences of Aristotle, 
existing only as realized in nature, as ideas in the 
mind of God, as the self-evolving categories of Hegel, 
as the perfecting principle and the fashioning laws in 
the doctrine of evolution. 

Man in his preexistent state dwelt in the region of 
immaterial ideas and gazed on the fulness of their 
truth. At his human birth he was made oblivious 
of his past existence, and growth in wisdom was a 
gradual realization in the consciousness of the eternal 
verities formerly known. As in Wordsworth, man's 
birth was but a *' sleep and a forgetting ; " growth in 
knowledge was a remembering. *' Trailing clouds of 
glory do we come from God, who is our home." The 
truth in this metaphor of philosophy, we may believe, 
is that man is of divine origin, and hence may know 
the divine revelations in his own being and in the 
material world. Here was foreshadowed in rough 



/ 



36 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

outlines the spiritual idealism which in its fresh form 
appears to be gaining new ground to-day. God 
writes the book of nature ; man is the son of God 
and reads and vaguely understands the meaning of 
the mighty volume. 

Sensations are not knowledge, but the signs of 
knowledge, as words are the signs of thought, and 
the mind is innately active and rational, else there 
could be no interpretation of those signs. This ap- 
pears to be the true explanation of the fact that we 
are educated by contact with nature. Without the 
signs, no communication of knowledge ; without the 
native power of the reader, no reception of knowl- 
edge. 

Plato held that the ideas were manifest in nature 
and were also innate in the mind ; hence by self- 
examination and comparison with the copies of the 
ideas in nature, man arrived at essential truth which 
was the work of philosophy. 

Plato identified the Idea of Ideas with Cause, Mind, 
the Good or God. God was a personality and su- 
preme above the gods. He was named by his chief 
attribute, the Good, and of this the True and the 
Beautiful were qualities. Cousin says, " The True, 
the Beautiful, and the Good are only revelations of 
the same Being ; that which reveals them to us is 
reason." " If all perfection belongs to the perfect 
being, God will possess beauty in its plenitude. The 
father of the world, of its laws, of its ravishing 
harmonies, the author of forms, colors, and sounds, 
he is the principle of beauty in nature. It is he 
whom we adore without knowing it, under the 
name of the ideal, when our imagination, borne on 
from beauties to beauties, calls for a final beauty 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 



17 



in which it may find repose." This passage is 
thoroughly Platonic in spirit and throws much 
light on the meaning of these absolute ideas of 
Plato. With change of terms the same passage 
would apply to Truth and Goodness. We trace 
them as they appear in the conscious reason and 
disposition, as they are manifested in the relations 
of society or are suggested by the reality and benefi- 
cence of the world, and we are led to the concep- 
tion of the perfect ideals whose truth exists in God. 

Plato has four principles whose interrelation and 
process of the active elements determine the world, 
as the laws of modern evolution are conceived to 
work out the results discovered by science : (i) un- 
limited, unformed, or chaotic nature ; (2) law, im- 
posing limits and forms upon nature ; (3) the result- 
ing, definite types and ideas of a rational world ; (4) 
the Cause which effects these results. 

The Good is that which imparts truth to the ob- 
ject and knowledge to the perceiving subject, and is 
the cause of science and truth ; hence, to know the 
Good is the ethical aim, for to know the Good is to 
act in harmony with it, and knowledge is virtue. 

Plato was fully aware that the philosopher, then 
as to-day, was regarded by the many as a useless 
star-gazer, and in the celebrated Allegory of the Cave 
he shows the relation of true insight to the common 
view of life and the world. He imagines dwellers in 
a cave so placed that they see only the shadows of 
passing objects and hear only the echoes of sounds 
from the outer world. If released and brought to 
the full light of the sun they are dazzled and pained, 
and think they are in a world of false appearance, 
and believe the realities are the familiar shadows in 



38 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

the cave. After a while they become accustomed to 
the day and the real objects, and see their truth and 
beauty. And if they return to the cave, they are 
half blind and appear ridiculous to the dwellers 
there. He concludes, '' Whether I am right or not, 
God only knows; but, whether true or false, my 
opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea 
of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an 
effort ; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the 
universal author of all things beautiful and right, 
parent of light and lord of light in this world, and 
the source of truth and reason in the other : this is 
the first great cause which he, who would act ration- 
ally either in public or private life, must behold." 

To the Sophist, who follows the opinion of the 
many instead of regarding fixed principles of truth, he 
pays his respects with the searching satire of a Carlyle. 

His theology, which is a part of his philosophy, 
has many striking features that have commanded the 
astonishment of the Christian world. '' God the 
Creator changes not ; He deceives not." It is wrong 
to do good to friends and injure enemies, for the in- 
jury of another can be in no case just. If you have 
a quarrel with any one, become reconciled before 
you sleep. In heaven is the pattern of the perfect 
city. All things will work together for good to the 
just. He advocates the severest abstract piety that, 
as in the conduct of the sternest Roman or the se- 
verest Puritan, swerves not from duty. The myth 
of Er, the Armenian, reminds us in many points of 
the judgment day ; and his exhortation to pursue 
the heavenly way that it may be well with us here 
and hereafter, may be our salvation if we are obedi- 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. ^^ 

ent, is one of the most striking in the history of 
religious beHef. 

In the fifth book of the *' Laws " is an exhortation 
to right living that partakes of the spirit of the Chris- 
tian philosophy. Every man is to honor his own 
soul with an honor that regards divine good, to value 
principle higher than life, to place virtue above all 
gold, to glory in following the better course, to count 
reverence in children a greater heritage than riches, 
to regard a contract as a holy thing, to avoid excess 
of self-love and to adhere to the truth as the begin- 
ning of every good. We need no further illustration 
of the fact that Platonism was naturally welcomed 
by the early Christian Church. 

The ethical ideals of Plato are the most valuable 
phase of his writings. In the First Book of the 
'' Republic," Thrasymachus, in a dialogue with Soc- 
rates, defines justice to be Sublime Simplicity ^ and 
argues that the unjust are discreet and wise, as some 
may argue to-day that shrewd dishonesty is com- 
mendable. The ethics of Plato is the opposite pole 
of this philosophy, and as such stands for the ra- 
tional and moral order of the world. His system is 
not hedonistic, but ideal. It aims at a good, but the 
good is attained by a life of virtue. 

In a famous passage of the " Republic," the tran- 
scendently just man is described. He is to be clothed 
in justice only. Being the best of men, he is to be 
esteemed the worst, and so continue to the hour of 
his death. He is to be bound, scourged, and suffer 
every kind of evil, and even be crucified ; still he is to 
be just for righteousness* sake. No wonder some 
Christian fathers believed this referred to Him who 



40 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



was to come, as described in the celebrated chapter 
of Isaiah. The best man is also the happiest, 
whether seen or unseen by gods and men. In the 
*' Crito " Socrates will not escape from prison if it is not 
right, though he suffer death or any other calamity. 
*' Virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of 
the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and 
deformity of the soul." He is a fool who laughs 
at aught but folly and vice. The possession of the 
whole world is of no value without the good. No 
pleasure except that of the wise is quite true and 
pure. " Is not the noble that which subjects the 
beast to the man, or rather to the god in man ? " 
'' How would a man profit if he received gold and 
silver on the condition that he was to enslave the 
noblest part of him to the worst ? " '' The Holy is 
loved of God because it is Holy." Not pleasure, but 
wisdom and knowledge and right opinions and true 
reasonings are better, both now and forever. The 
good ruler considers not his own interest, but that of 
the state. The governing class are to be told that 
gold and silver they have from God ; the divine 
metal is in them. 

Any one who finds in these views a doctrine of 
pleasure must seek with a prejudiced eye. Plato, as 
usual, anticipates later ethical discussions, and points 
to the fact that there is a quality in pleasure ; and 
quality in conduct is the very contention of absolute 
moralists. He speaks of the soul whose dye of good 
quality is washed out by pleasure. The attainment 
of genuine well-being, the development of divine 
qualities within men, was the aim, and the conscious- 
ness of this priceless possession of rational manhood 
was the incidental reward. His doctrine places be- 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 



41 



fore men abstract ideals of Truth, Beauty, and Good- 
ness, which invite the better nature by their supreme 
excellence. 

Plato enumerates four virtues : Wisdom, Courage, 
Temperance, Justice. Professor Green interprets 
them in modern form, and maintains their fixed 
standard of excellence and universal application. 
Any modern analysis of the principles of conduct 
which contribute to health of soul and are favorable 
to success in life, would confirm the enumeration of 
the Greek virtues. Professor Green says : The Good 
Will is the will (i) to know what is true and to make 
what is beautiful ; (2) to endure pain and fear ; (3) to 
resist the allurements of pleasure ; (4) to take for 
one's self and to give to others, not what one is in- 
clined to, but what is due. Not only does he enjoin 
the spirit of justice, but the cultivation of moral 
courage, and, as contrasted with lazy ignorance, the 
growth in wisdom which is realization of virtue. 

Wisdom played a peculiar and important part in 
the Greek ethics. Vice was ignorance, because the 
wise man could but live according to his best knowl- 
edge. And the Greeks, properly interpreted, were 
right. Did we see virtue in all its truth and beauty, 
and vice in all its deformity, we could but choose 
the best. Growth in wisdom was a gradual realiza- 
tion in the soul of the heavenly ideas that were the 
true heritage of man, and in this development the 
soul was gradually perfected. This beautiful and 
satisfying philosophy reappears to-day in some of 
the most ennobling systems of ethics the world has 
produced. It makes individual and race progress an 
increase in consciousness of the knowledge of truth 
and virtue, a revelation of the divine within us. 



42 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



The Jewish and the Christian conception of divine 
law as binding man to the performance of his moral 
obligations was not strongly characteristic of the 
Greek mind. But responsibility, without which con- 
duct can have no ethical significance, was by no 
means foreign to Plato's system. In the myth of 
Er the soul has its choice of the lot of life, and its 
condition at the end of the earthly career is a re- 
quital for the deeds done in the body. Throughout 
Plato's writings the implications of personal merit or 
guilt are prominent. 

It is a doctrine of virtue rather than of duty. He 
who sees the right and does not do it is a fool, but 
that is his matter. He is not bound by any moral 
law to be wise. If he is virtuous it is well ; if not, so 
much the worse for him. Love of God is the essen- 
tial of the Christian ethics ; knowledge of the Good, 
of the Greek. To pursue the Good was virtue, and 
virtue he sets forth in world-wide contrast with vice. 
Plato's conception of justice, or right, was so exalted 
that some have thought he attained in later years 
an insight into the nature of conscience, or the Moral 
Faculty. 

The Greek idea of beauty must be touched in 
passing. The wise life was a beautiful life. The 
Beautiful was an attribute of the Deity. They had 
the love of Beauty which Goethe possessed when he 
had become fascinated with the study of Greek art, 
and exclaimed, *' The Beautiful is greater than the 
Good, for it includes the Good, and adds something 
to it." Plato calls the Beautiful the splendor of the 
True. The youth should learn to love beautiful 
forms, first a single form, then all beautiful forms 
and beauty wherever found ; then he will turn to 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 



43 



beauty of mind, of institutions and laws, and sci- 
ences, and he will gradually draw toward the great 
sea of beauty, and create and contemplate many fair 
thoughts, and he will become conscious of absolute 
beauty, and come near to God, who is transcendent 
beauty and goodness. 



-T- 



-^ 



^ 



Plato's philosophy makes education a process of 
developing the power and knowledge latent in the 
mind, rather than a process of teaching. The So- 
cratic method of drawing out is one of time-honored 
use among pedagogues. Plato defines a good edu- 
cation as " That which gives to the body and to the 
soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which 
they are capable." The ideal aim is the harmonious nL* 
or symmetrical development of the physical, mental, 
and moral powers. Physical training is for the health 
of the soul, as well as for the strength and grace of 
the body. The training of the reason is of first 
importance. The aesthetic emotions are to be culti- 
vated as a means of moral and religious education. 
Memory is little emphasized. 

The artisans and laborers were simply to learn a 
trade ; the warrior class were to be trained in gym- 
nastics and music. The complete education of the 
highest class, or the magistrates, was to include 
music and literature, gymnastics, arithmetic, geometry 
and astronomy, and finally philosophy. All this was 
to be supplemented by practical acquaintance with 
the details of civil and military functions. 

Education is the foundation of the state, and in 
the '' Laws " he would make it compulsory. The 
women are to receive the same training as the men. 
Children are to be taught to honor their parents 



44 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

and respect their elders. The direction in which 
education starts a man will determine his future life. 
In early childhood education is to be made attractive, 
although to unduly honor the likings of children is 
to spoil them. The talcs which children are per- 
mitted to hear must be models of virtuous thought. 
Harmful tales concerning the gods and heroes are 
prohibited, but noble traits and deeds of endurance 
are to be emphasized. Youth should imitate no 
baseness, but what is temperate, holy, free, and 
courageous ; for '' imitations, beginning in early 
youth, at last sink into the constitution and become 
a second nature." Children must not be frightened 
with ghost stories and reference to the infernal 
world. 

Excessive athletics makes men stupid and subject 
to disease. The kinds of music employed in educa- 
tion must inspire courage, reverence, freedom, and 
temperance. Art should present true beauty and 
grace, to draw the soul of childhood into harmony 
with the beauty of reason. '' Rhythm and harmony 
find their way into the secret places of the soul, 
making the soul graceful of him who is rightly 
educated." Good language and music and grace 
and rhythm depend on simplicity. 

Arithmetic cultivates quickness, and teaches ab- 
stract number and necessary truth. Geometry deals 
with axiomatic knowledge and will draw the soul 
toward truth. Astronomy compels the mind to 
look upward. It is to be studied not so much for 
practical use, as in navigation, but because the mind 
is purified and illumined thereby. In this connec- 
tion Plato maintains his position against those who 
carp at the so-called useless studies. 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 



45 



Plato's ideal state ofifends the thought of conserva- 
tive men more than all else in his writings, but it 
was conceived in view of the highest ideas of virtue 
and justice. It was simply bad psychology. He 
enumerates and describes five kinds of states and the 
corresponding five types of individual character. 
Indeed he studies justice first in the ideal state, and 
then in the individual. The three impulses of the 
soul are compared with the three classes of citizens 
in the state, and to each he ascribes its excellence, 
thus forming his list of virtues. But we cannot 
dwell upon this phase of Plato's teachings. We 
may, however, refer to his caricature of extreme 
democracy ; it has a useful modern application. 

In this state the father descends to his son and 
fears him, and the son is on a level with his father 
and does not fear him. The alien is equal to the 
citizen, and the slave to the master. The master 
fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise 
their masters. The young man is on a level with 
the old, and old men, for fear of seeming morose 
and authoritative, condescend to the young and are 
full of pleasantry and gayety. Even the animals in 
the democracy show the spirit of equality, and the 
horses and asses march along the streets with all the 
rights and dignities of freemen, and will run at you 
if you do not get out of their way, and everything 
is just ready to burst with liberty. The citizens 
become sensitive and chafe at authority, and cease 
to care for the laws. Surely the statesman can turn 
to Plato for wisdom, for out of this condition grows 
tyranny. 

And, correspondingly, the democratical young man, 
a kind of fin de Steele type, is described. Insolence 



46 EDUCATION AND LIFE, 

he terms breeding, and anarchy liberty, and waste 
magnificence, and impudence courage. 

No wonder Plato saw that his ideal state would 
not be realized until kings became pJiilosophcrs^ that 
is to say — never. Modern dreamers might profit by 
his wise predictions. 

Plato's doctrine is one of ideas and idealism as 
contrasted with sensations and sensationalism. It is 
spiritualism as contrasted with materialism. The 
higher produces the lower, instead of the lower 
the higher. It is the doctrine that recognizes the 
rational order of the world, the transcendent nature 
of conscious man, and his ethical aim. It places 
ideals before man, in the attaining of which he comes 
to realization of his true being. It is a doctrine of 
rational explanation of man's existence. As such it 
has always strongly invited the adherence of phi- 
losophers and Christians. The founders of the church 
regarded Plato as directly inspired or as having de- 
rived inspiration from the Hebrew scriptures. 

The doctrine of Universals may be taken with 
allowance, but we may believe that it represents the 
right side of philosophical thought. It matters not 
much whether we hold to the view of Plato's ideas 
or native truths of the mind developed by experience 
or the creative activity of the mind in knowing the 
outer world or the doctrine of participation in the 
divine nature and divine thought or the power to 
generalize from the facts of subjective and objective 
nature, a power above, and not of, material nature — 
all these views imply man's spiritual and ideal 
character. Behind man and behind nature is the 
same reality. In some sense (not the pantheistic, as 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 



47 



commonly understood) both are manifestations of 
that reality. Hence the power of man to know the 
world, because it is a rational world, and manifesta- 
tion answers to manifestation, thought to thought. 
He who claims that all knowledge is founded in 
sensation is partly right ; for to know the outer 
realm is to realize the inner and to know, in part, 
the truth of the Universe. 

Subjective ideas, in some form, must be retained in 
philosophy. Our world, as a world of evolution, is 
orderly and has a progressive plan ; hence, according 
to all human conception, is the product of ideas 
worked out through what are called the laws of nature. 

Men have always asked what is the use of philoso- 
phy, and to-day they repeat the question with 
emphasis. We appreciate the state of mind that 
rejoices in consciousness of standing on the solid 
earth, the courageous patience that works out with 
guarded induction scientific truth, the honesty that 
will not substitute hasty conjecture for fact, and the 
faith that works toward results to be fully realized 
only in the distant future. But many scientific men 
are coming to regard biological and psychological 
sciences as great laboratories for philosophy. We 
may believe the coming problems will be solved by 
the cooperation of philosophy and science. Science 
studies the objective side and philosophy the sub- 
jective side of the same reality. 

Philosophy has a use as an attempt to satisfy the 
imperative need of men to ask the meaning of their 
being. It has a use as forming a rational hypothesis 
concerning a First Cause, and a Final Aim. It is a 
ground of belief in ideals. All speculative philosophy 
has been inspired more or less by Platonism, and has 



48 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



given the world the noblest, most hopeful, useful, 
and influential systems of ethics. Philosophical 
training gives the power to view comprehensively, 
connectedly, and logically any group of facts. It 
contains the presuppositions of science and of our 
very existence. The investigator in the forest learns 
many valuable details ; if he ascends the mountains, 
he views the landscape as a whole, and, as it were, 
finds himself. Finally philosophy represents the 
supreme, the spiritual, interests of man and aims at 
essential truth. 

Will it be relegated to the shelves of archaeology ? 
The signs of to-day appear to answer no. In the 
whole history of philosophy, the mind has never been 
able to rest permanently in any extreme or one-sided 
position or in any position that is inadequate to 
explain essential facts of existence. Hence it cannot 
rest permanently in materialism. A recent writer 
speaks of the history of philosophy as ^' preeminently 
a record of remarkable returns of the human intellect 
to ancient follies and dreams, long since outgrown 
and supposed to have been consigned to oblivion." 
Well ! It is strange indeed if nature has evolved 
a product whose needs, instincts, and native beliefs 
are a lie, a product without aim or rational ground 
for existence. If it is so, then pessimism is our 
philosophy and annihilation our best solution of the 
problem of conscious life. Most men are too re- 
spectful believers in evolution to ascribe to nature 
any such satanic irony. 

At any rate one likes to take an excursion in this 
field ; he feels benefited by the trip. Men still like 
to seek the great fountain head of philosophy, and 
take a dip in the Castalian spring — a mental bath of 



PLATO'S PHILOSOPHY. 



49 



this sort is a good and useful thing. They Hke to sit 
in the shady groves of the Academy and Hsten to 
Plato or walk with Aristotle in the environs of the 
Gymnasium. The mighty minds of the past have 
marked out the broad outlines of truth ; it is our 
work to fill in, to correct. The ethical conceptions 
were furnished by the ancients. The modern world 
has merely made them richer in content and broader 
in application. The deeper meaning of any philoso- 
phy or science is learned by the historic method, 
which gives us the trend of events. 

The closing words of the " Republic " are an appro- 
priate ending to the discussion of Plato : "• And 
thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not 
perished, and may be our salvation, if we are obedient 
to the spoken word ; and we shall pass safely over 
the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be 
defiled. Wherefore my counsel is that we hold fast 
to the heavenly way and follow after justice and 
virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal 
and able to endure every sort of good and every sort 
of evil. Thus shall we live, dear to one another and 
to the gods, both while remaining here and when, 
like conquerors in the games who go round to gather 
gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be well 
with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a 
thousand years which we have been reciting." 

" Plato, thou reasonest well ! — 
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortality ? 



*Tis the divinity that stirs within us ; 

'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 

And intimates eternity to man." 

4 



SECONDARY EDUCATION: A REVIEW* 

The manner of investigation of the Committee of 
Ten took a somewhat different turn from what was 
anticipated when the original report which led to the 
undertaking was made, but no one now doubts the 
wisdom of the plan finally adopted. It would be 

* In a report on requirements for admission to college, made to 
the National Council of Education in 1891, the following recom- 
mendation appeared : 

" That a committee be appointed by this Council to select a dozen 
universities and colleges and a dozen high and preparatory schools, 
to be represented in a convention to consider the problems of second- 
ary and higher education." 

In accordance with the recommendation, the committee making 
the report, of which the writer was chairman, was authorized to call 
a meeting of representatives of leading educational institutions, at 
Saratoga in 1892. Invitations were issued and some thirty delegates 
responded. After a three days' session a plan was formulated, which 
was adopted by the National Council. The Committe of Ten, thus 
appointed and charged with the duty of conducting an investigation 
of secondary-school studies, held its first meeting in New York City 
in November, 1S92, with President Eliot of Harvard University as 
chairman. The committee arranged for nine subcommittees or 
conferences, each to consider a principal subject of high-school 
courses, and submitted to them definite inquiries. Each conference 
was composed of prominent instructors in the particular subject as- 
signed. The inquiries covered such points as place of beginning the 
study, time to be given, selection of topics, advisability of difference 
in treatment for pupils going to college and for those who finish with 
the high school, methods, etc. The reports of these conferences in 
printed form, together with a summary of the recommendations, were 
in the hands of the Committee of Ten at their second meeting in New 



SECONDARY EDUCATION : A REVIEW. 



51 



difficult to find groups of men in America better 
fitted than the members of the conferences appointed 
by the Committee to discuss the specific subjects as- 
signed them ; and their recommendations as to choice 
of matter for secondary schools, the time element, 
place of studies in the curriculum, and the best 
methods constitute a most valuable contribution to 
the educational literature of the period. In the 
main, they represent the best thought of practical 
educators. 

We shall not enter into a discussion of the details 
of these conference reports ; each report and, in 
many instances, each section of a report is in itself a 
large theme. The summary of results and the rec- 
ommendations of the Committee of Ten will occupy 
the time allotted. 

It was expected that the report as a whole would 
excite much discussion and invite extensive criticism ; 
and if no other result is attained than the sharpening 
of wits in controversy, the existence of the report has 
sufficient warrant. 

It is Impossible to say of any opinions that they 
are final, and of any methods that they are the best. 
Some hold that the eternal verities are to be discov- 
ered in the consciousness of the few geniuses, and 
that obtaining a consensus of opinion is not the way 
to reach wise conclusions. If we are Hegelian in our 
philosophy of history, we shall hold to the law of 



York, November, 1893. The report of the Committee of Ten, in- 
cluding the conference reports, through the good offices of the Com- 
missioner of Education, was published by the Government. 

As a member of the Committee of Ten, the author was invited to 
review the Report before the Council of Education, at a meeting held 
inAsbury Park, July, 1894. 



52 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

development, shall believe that each stage of thought 
is a necessary one, that the best light is obtained by 
the historic method, and that the highest evolution 
of thought is to be found in the belief and practice of 
the advanced representatives of any line of investiga- 
tion. The work of the conferences was to correlate 
the parts of each subject by the method of applying 
reason to history ; it was the work of the commit- 
tee proper to correlate these results by the same 
method. Whether the committee was large and 
varied enough to represent all sides is to be decided 
by the discussions of those best fitted to form 
opinions. 

After a careful review of the work of our com- 
mittee, I venture to make a formal list of opinions 
presented, most of which, I think, should be heartily 
indorsed, reserving till later the discussion of a few 
of them : 

1. That work in many secondary - school studies 
should be begun earlier. 

2. That each subject should be made to help every 
other, as, for example, history should contribute to 
the study of English, and natural history should be 
correlated with language, drawing, literature, and 
geography. 

3. That every subject should be taught in the same 
way, whether in preparation for college or as part of 
a finishing course. 

4. That more highly trained teachers are needed, 
especially for subjects that are receiving increased 
attention, as the various sciences and history. 

5. That in all scientific subjects, laboratory work 
should be extended and improved. 



SECONDARY EDUCATION : A REVIEW. 53 

6. That for some studies special instructors should 
be employed to guide the work of teachers in ele- 
mentary and secondary schools. 

7. That all pupils should pursue a given subject in 
the same way, and to the same extent, as long as they 
study it at all. 

8. That every study should be made a serious sub- 
ject of instruction, and should cultivate the pupil's 
powers of observation, memory, expression, and rea- 
soning. 

9. That the choice between the classical course 
and the Latin-scientific course should be postponed 
as long as possible, until the taste and power of the 
pupil have been tested, and he has been able to de- 
termine his future aim. 

10. That twenty periods per week should be 
adopted as the standard, providing that five of these 
periods be given to unprepared work. 

11. That parallel programmes should be identical 
in as many of their parts as possible. 

12. That drawing should be largely employed in 
connection with most of the studies. 

13. The omission of industrial and commercial 
subjects. This is mentioned without comment. 

14. That more field work should be required for 
certain sciences. 

15. The desirability of uniformity. Not definitely 
recommended in the report. 

16. That the function of the high schools should 
be to prepare for the duties of life as well as to fit 
for college. 

17. That colleges and scientific schools should ac- 
cept any one of the courses of study as preparation 
for admission. 



54 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

1 8. That a good course in English should be re- 
quired of all pupils entering college. 

19. That many teachers should employ various 
means for better preparation, such as summer schools, 
special courses of instruction given by college pro- 
fessors, and instruction of school superintendents, 
principals of high schools, or specially equipped 
teachers. 

20. That the colleges should take a larger interest 
in secondary and elementary schools. 

21. That technological and professional schools 
should require for admission a complete secondary- 
school education. 

22. That each study pursued should be given 
continuous time adequate to securing from it good 
results. 

The points of the report which I should question 
are as follows : 

1. That Latin should be begun much earlier than 
now. (This is a conference recommendation.) 

2. That English should be given as much time as 
Latin. (Conference recommendation.) 

3. The large number of science subjects recom- 
mended, with loss of adequate time for each. 

4. The omission of a careful analysis of the value 
of each subject, absolute and relative, preparatory to 
tabulating courses. 

5. The apparent implication that the multiplying 
of courses is advisable. 

6. The implications that the choice of subjects by 
the pupils may be a matter of comparative indiffer- 
ence — the doctrine of equivalence of studies. 



SECONDARY EDUCATION : A REVIEW. 



55 



7. Some parts of the model programmes made by 
the committee. 

An examination of tabulated results of the in- 
vestigations of the conferences will show that in 
their opinion the following studies should be begun 
below the high school : 

English literature. 

German or French. 

Elementary algebra and concrete geometry. 

Natural phenomena. 

Natural history. 

Biography and mythology, civil government, and 
Greek and Roman history. 

Physical geography. 

There has been much discussion within a few years 
as to improvements in elementary courses of study, 
with a growing tendency toward important modifica- 
tions. Rigid and mechanical methods and an exag- 
gerated notion of thoroughness in every detail have 
often become a hindrance to the progress of the 
pupils in elementary schools. The mind of the child 
is susceptible of a more mature development at the 
age of fourteen than is usually attained. There are 
numerous examples of pupils in graded schools, who, 
with very limited school terms, prepare for the high 
school at the age of fourteen. Under the guidance 
of painstaking and intelligent parents or private 
tutors, children cover, in a very brief time, the 
studies of the grammar school. All have noted, 
under favoring conditions, a surprising development, 
at an early age, in understanding of history, litera- 
ture, and common phenomena, a growth far beyond 
that reached at the same age in the schools. These 



56 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



facts simply show the possibilities of the period of 
elementary education. We understand that ulti- 
mately those best prepared to judge must determine 
the modifications, if any are needed, of the elemen- 
tary courses. Some say the courses are already over- 
crowded, it is impossible to add anything. Is it not 
true, however, that by placing less stress upon a few 
things, by arousing mental activity through the 
stimulus of the scientific method, and by improving 
the skill of the teachers, the work suggested by these 
conferences may be easily accomplished ? All these 
experiments are already old in many schools in the 
country. 

Consider the logical order of studies. Each child, 
almost from the dawn of consciousness, recognizes 
relations of number and space, observes phenomena 
and draws crude inferences, records in his mind the 
daily deeds of his associates, and employs language 
to express his thought, often with large use of 
imagination. Already has begun the spontaneous 
development in mathematics, science, history, and 
literature. Nature points the way and we should 
follow the direction. These subjects in their various 
forms should be pursued from the first. Hill's 
" True Order of Studies " shows that there are some 
five parallel, upward-running lines representing the 
divisions of knowledge, and that development may 
be compared to the encircling, onward movement of 
a spiral, which, at each turn, cuts off a portion of all 
the lines. If we accept this view, we must grant 
that geometry on its concrete side belongs to the 
earliest period of education ; that the observation of 
natural phenomena with simple inferences will be a 
most attractive study to the child ; that the import- 



SECONDARY EDUCATION : A REVIEW. 



57 



ance of observation of objects of natural history is 
foreshadowed by the spontaneous interest taken in 
them before the school period ; that tales of ancient 
heroes, and the pleasing myths of antiquity, together 
with the striking characters and incidents of Greek 
and Roman history, belong to the early period of 
historic knowledge ; that the whole world of sub- 
stance and phenomena that constitutes our environ- 
ment should be the subject of study under the head 
of physiography or physical geography ; that the 
thoughts of literature, ethical and imaginative, ap- 
peal readily to the child's mind. We may add that 
the taste of children may be early cultivated, and 
that the glory which the child discovers in nature 
makes possible the art idea and the religious senti- 
ment. The reason for beginning a foreign language 
early is somewhat independent, but all agree that 
early study of a living language is desirable. 

Should we not reconsi-der our analysis of the 
elementary courses ? Superintendents and teachers 
will find the necessary changes not impossible but 
easy. The sum of all that is recommended for the 
elementary schools by the conferences is not so 
formidable as at first appears. 

In the conference reports to the Committee of Ten 
are some views that have a bearing upon the subject 
of the high-school period. The Latin Conference 
hopes for a modification of the grammar-school 
courses, that the high-school course may be be- 
gun earlier. The Greek Conference voted that the 
average age at which pupils enter college should 
be lowered. The Conference on English was of 
the opinion that English work during the last two 



eg EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

years of the grammar-school course should be in 
the hands of a special teacher or teachers. The 
Conference on Modern Languages holds that when- 
ever competent teachers can be secured the 
grammar school should have an elective course in 
French or German. The Physics Conference rec- 
ommended that *' Whenever it is possible, special 
science teachers or superintendents should be ap- 
pointed to instruct teachers of elementary schools 
in the methods of teaching natural phenomena." 
The History Conference thought it desirable that in 
all schools history should be taught by teachers who 
have a fondness for historical studies and have paid 
special attention to effective methods of imparting 
instruction. One member of the conference was 
almost ready to advise omitting history from school 
programmes because of so much rote, text-book 
teaching. 

These opinions are additional evidence of need of 
modifications in grammar-school work, and some 
think that ultimately the best solution will be found 
in extending the high-school period downward to in- 
clude part of the elementary period. 

It was agreed in the Committee of Ten that their 
task would be less difficult did the high-school period 
begin, say two years earlier ; and the reason why the 
recommendation of the conferences, that certain 
studies be introduced below the high school, was 
viewed with suspicion was the impossibility, with the 
present organization of the schools, of securing 
good instruction in these studies. 

The following view of the high-school period is 
expressed by a prominent high-school principal : 
" My opinion is that it would be much better for our 



SECONDARY EDUCATION : A REVIEW. 



59 



boys and girls to begin their preparation for college 
at least two years earlier than they now do. If our 
high schools could receive the pupils at eleven or 
twelve, instead of fourteen, preparation for college 
would be completed at sixteen instead of eighteen, 
as is now generally the case." 

The custom in European countries supports the 
view that high-school methods should reach down 
into the grades. In Prussia only three years of ele- 
mentary work precede the gymnasium, and the pupil 
can enter the gymnasium at the age of nine. The 
gymnasium itself covers a period of nine years, ex- 
tending five years below the period of our high 
schools. Examining the course of the Prussian 
gymnasium, we find in the first five years, or before 
the age of fourteen, Latin, Greek, French, history, 
geometry, natural history ; and it is conceded by 
many educators that more is attained by the age of 
eighteen in Germany than in this country ; that at 
the age of fourteen in Germany the development 
of the pupil is more mature, and that in essential 
features of education he has made more desirable 
progress. 

If our high schools should be made equivalent in 
length and rank to the Prussian gymnasium, the 
chanofe would involve the entire reconstruction of 
our school system, from the primary school to the 
end of the university. The high schools would be- 
come colleges, and the colleges would become high 
schools, and the graduates from them would enter 
the university prepared to take up professional or 
other special university work. That there are many 
leading educators who advocate these changes for 
the universities is well known, and there are some 



Co EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

strong tendencies toward the German system. On 
the other hand, many deplore the possibiHty of los- 
ing the American college, which is an institution 
somewhat peculiar to this country. They think that 
its broad, general education and superior culture are 
worth retaining, and that specialization should begin 
at a late period. 

One significant fact stares us in the face, namely, 
that the average American boy no longer will 
spend four years beyond the high school in general 
education, and then pass four years more at the 
professional school or three years in the graduate 
course. Somewhere the work must be shortened, in 
either the elementary school, the high school, or the 
college. 

The whole subject is of great interest and impor- 
tance, but at the present stage of inquiry no definite 
conclusions can be reached. 

The relation of the mind to a study is determined 
by the nature of the mind and the nature of the 
study, and there seems to be no reason in psychology 
why a college-preparatory subject should be taught 
differently to one fitting for the duties of life. Be- 
sides, it is economy to make identical the work of 
different courses, as far as possible. There was per- 
fect unanimity in the opinion that the same studies 
should be pursued by all in the same way, as far as 
taken. 

Every one knows that many teachers are unskilled 
to present in the elementary schools the beginnings 
of geometry, science, history, or literature, and that 
the failures in this work are due to the mechanical 
efforts of those who have had no higher or special 



SECOND A RY ED UCA TION : A RE VIE W. 6 1 

training. The demands of present methods are im- 
perative for improved power in instruction. Science 
is not well taught in all schools. There is a school 
which teaches biology from a manual without speci- 
men, microscope, or illustrations. It was a humiliat- 
ing confession of the committee that the classical 
course is superior, for the reason that it is difficult to 
find enough instructors competent to teach modern 
subjects by modern methods. 

A very important point, recognized by the com- 
mittee, is the advantage of postponing as long as 
possible the necessity of making a final choice of 
courses. In this country we have no fixed condi- 
tions of rank, and the poor man's son has the same 
privileges as the sons of position and wealth. Hence, 
the station in life is not determined by the differ- 
entiation in courses at an early period. Very few 
parents decide upon the final character of the child's 
instruction much before the beginning of the college 
period. 

For these reasons many would not agree with the 
conference recommendation to begin Latin at an 
earlier period. It would not be economy ; there is 
enough else that belongs to the elementary stage of 
education, and no plan is feasible that is founded 
upon the foreign view of caste and fixed condition 
in life. 

Uniformity in requirements for admission to col- 
lege was the subject of the report that finally led to 
this investigation. Although uniformity is not 
prominently urged in the report of the Committee of 
Ten, doubtless the logical outcome of the latter report 
will be a tendency toward some kind of uniformity. 



62 EDUCATION AND LIFE, 

There is a vigorous conflict of opinion to-day as 
to nationalism and individualism, with a strong 
tendency, especially in education, toward individual- 
ism. In the opinion of many there exists a harmful 
slavery of the high and preparatory schools to the 
erratic and varied demands of different colleges, and 
also a slavery to ignorance and caprice in some 
schools themselves, which would be removed by a 
general agreement to uniformity. Men are not en- 
slaved, but are emancipated, by organization, and 
freedom of the individual is found in the good order 
of society and government. In a facetious criticism 
of the committee's report, arguing for extreme in- 
dividualism in choice of studies, appears the follow- 
ing query : ^* Please tell us if you and your colleagues 
on the conference considered any methods for the 
encouragement of cranks ? " No ; for the encourage- 
ment neither of cranks, nor of crankiness, but for the 
encouragement of the best kind of rational education. 
While there are a few wise, independent investigators 
who need no enforced uniformity, and will not be 
bound by the recommendations of others, many of the 
schools are largely imitators, or, worse, are working 
independently with limited insight, and these schools 
would be vastly improved by adopting courses and 
methods growing from a consensus of the best 
opinions of the country. The lowest would thereby 
tend to rise to the highest, and from that plane a 
new advance could be made. Meantime the original 
thinkers would be free to push forward toward higher 
results, to be generally adopted later. Through con- 
tact of various ideas some principles are settled, and 
the world is free to move on toward fresh discovery. 
The selection of studies is to be determined largely 



SECONDARY EDUCATION : A REVIEW. 63 

by the nature of the mind and by the universal 
character of natural and civil environments, and this 
fact points toward the possibility of uniformity. 
The period of secondary education is not the period 
for specializing, and even if it were, there should be 
some uniformity in differentiation. In the United 
States there is, broadly speaking, uniformity of 
tradition, of government, of civilization, and the 
educated youth of San Francisco bears about the 
same relation to the world as the educated youth of 
Boston ; hence, so far as elementary and secondary 
education is pursued, there is no reason why it 
should not be substantially the same in various 
schools — not in details belonging to the individual 
teacher, but in paper requirements and important 
features of methods. 

Nothing in the whole report is more important 
than the proposed closer connection between high 
schools and colleges, and this is clearly and forcibly 
urged. Whatever course of study properly belongs 
to a secondary school is also a good preparation for 
higher education, else either secondary or higher 
education is seriously in error. Whenever a youth 
decides to take a college course, he should find him- 
self on the road toward it. No one can doubt that 
in the coming years pupils having pursued properly 
arranged high-school courses must be admitted to 
corresponding courses in higher education. The 
divorcement between higher education and all lower 
grade work, except the classical, has been a fatal 
defect in the past. The entire course of education 
should be a practical interest of college professors, 
and there should be a hearty cooperation between 



64 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

them and school superintendents and principals in 
considering all educational problems. 

It is a fact of significance that a committee, on 
which some leading institutions are represented, 
urges the professional schools of the country to 
place their standard of admission as high as that of 
the colleges ; and we hope that aid will thus be 
given the institutions endeavoring to raise the re- 
quirements of law, medical, and divinity schools. 

The reports of most of the conferences asked for 
continuous and adequate work for each subject, that 
it might become a source of discipline and of valuable 
insight. No doubt part of the work in high schools 
is too brief and fragmentary to gain from it the best 
results. 

The aim should be to reduce the number of sub- 
jects taken by any pupil, and the number of topics 
under a subject. It is not necessary that the entire 
landscape be studied in all its parts and details, if a 
thorough knowledge of the most prominent features 
is gained. 

In one important point I was constrained to differ 
from the reading of the report, as finally submitted, 
although the expressions to which exceptions were 
taken were due rather to the standpoint of the writer 
of the report than the resolutions of the committee. 
I refer to those paragraphs in which it is implied 
that the choice of studies in secondary schools may 
be a matter of comparative indifference, provided 
good training is obtained from the subjects chosen. 
This view makes education formal, without giving 
due regard to the content. Here are the world of 
nature and the world of mind. Nature, when its 



SECONDARY EDUCATION : A REVIEW. 65 

meaning is realized, has the same meaning for all, 
and in its various phases affects all in substantially 
the same way. The history of mankind, in its vari- 
ous kinds and degrees of development, has the same 
content for all. The nature of mind in generic char- 
acteristics, and the universal truths that belong to 
the spiritual world, are the same for all. Mind has 
the same powers in all human beings. We all know, 
feel, and will ; all persons acquire through attention, 
retain in memory under the same conditions, obey 
the same laws of association, reason, so far as rightly, 
from the same principles, act from motives. Men 
may be classed crudely according to the motives that 
will appeal to them. While there are infinite varia- 
tions in details of men's natures, in power of insight, 
degree of development, methods of acquisition, pre- 
dominant motives, in interests and tendencies, all 
persons in their growth obey the laws of human na- 
ture. Hence, we may argue that a science of edu- 
cation is possible ; that it is possible to select studies 
with a view to their universal use in the primary 
development of the powers, and with the assurance 
of superior value as revealing to man his entire en- 
vironment and the nature of his being. 

Mere form, mere power, without content, mean 
nothing. Power is power through knowledge. The 
very world in which we are to use our power is the 
world which we must first understand in order to 
use it. The present is understood, not by the power 
to read history, but by what history contains. The 
laws of nature and deductions therefrom are not 
made available by mere power, but by the power 
which comes from the knowledge of them. Hence, 
the education which does not include something of 

5 



66 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



all views of the world, and of the thinking subject, is 

lacking 

power. 



lacking in data for the wise and effective use of 



In view of this position, the committee might well 
analyze carefully the nature and importance of each 
leading subject, representing a part of the field of 
knowledge, to the end that a wise correlation of the 
work of the conferences might be made. The study 
of number in its concrete form and in its abstract 
relations, the study of space relations, as founded 
upon axiomatic truths, are necessary as a basis of 
many kinds of knowledge, as representing an essen- 
tial view of the world, as a foundation for the possi- 
bilities of commerce and structures, and as furnish- 
ing important training in exact reasoning. Science 
includes many things ; but chemistry and physics, 
which explain the manifestations of force in the mate- 
rial world, biology which reveals important laws of 
plant and animal life, and physiography, which ac- 
quaints us with our entire environment as to loca- 
tion, phenomena, and partial explanation — these are 
connected with the practical side of civilization and 
the welfare of humanity, and are a guard against 
superstition and error; they are indispensable for 
practice in induction, and they should be well repre- 
sented in a course of study. History, in which man 
discovers the meaning of the present and gains wis- 
dom for the future, which is a potent source of eth- 
ical thought, must not be omitted. English language, 
as the means of accurate, vigorous, and beautiful 
expression, and English literature, which is the treas- 
ury of much of the world's best thought, are not 
subjects to leave to the election of the pupil. 



SECONDARY EDUCATION : A REVIEW. ^J 

In addition to the training in observation, mem- 
ory, expression, and inductive reasoning which most 
studies offer, we must consider the development of 
imagination, right emotion, and right will. In other 
words, aesthetic and ethical training is most essen- 
tial. Secondary schools need not employ formal 
courses of study to this end, but various means may 
be employed incidentally. There are a hundred 
ways in which taste may be cultivated, and literature 
is one of the best means for developing the art idea. 
Moral character is developed by right habit, by the 
right use of the powers in the process of education, 
by growth in knowledge of ethical principles, by 
growth of the spirit of reverence, and by the ethical 
code of religion. All of these means, except the 
formal use of the last, may be employed by the 
schools. And the ethical element is inherent in the 
very nature of right education. To educate rightly 
is to educate ethically. History, biography, and lit- 
erature make direct contributions to ethical knowl- 
edge. 

We now reach the study of foreign classical tongues. 
If there is nothing more than formal training, for in- 
stance, in Latin, the sooner we abandon its study 
the better. But we find in it also a valuable con- 
tent. In the process of development some phases 
of human possibility seem to have been almost fully 
realized, while the world has continued to develop 
along other lines. In such cases we must go back 
and fill our minds with the concepts that belong to 
the remote period. The Greek and Latin classics 
give us an insight into the character of ancient peo- 
ples and their institutions, give us the concepts of 
their civilizations, the beauty of their Hteratures. 



68 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

and make a practical contribution to the knowledge 
of our own language. From the foreign modern 
tongues, German may be chosen because of its valu- 
able literature, its contributions to science, its dignity, 
and its relation to the Anglo-Saxon element of our 
own language. 

We have endeavored to show that the choice of 
studies is not a matter of indifference, that mathe- 
matics, science, history, language and literature, and 
art and ethics all belong to the period of secondary 
education ; and we have tried to suggest the infer- 
ence that all should be employed. The relative im- 
portance of each cannot be exactly measured, but 
experience and reason must guide us. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES. 

We estimate a man's worth by his intellectual 
grasp, his aesthetic and ethical insight, and his power 
for action toward right and useful ends. If these 
characteristics make the ideal man, they should be 
the ideal aim of education, and a study is to be 
valued as it best contributes toward developing 
them. The same test of efficiency is to be applied 
to the whole curriculum of a school period. 

There is a correlation between the field of knowl- 
edge and the knowing being. The objective world, 
with its varied content, answers to the mind with its 
varied powers. It is through the objective world of 
nature and of man that the subject comes to a con- 
sciousness of himself. Each important phase of the 
objective world makes a distinct contribution in ex- 
tent or kind of knowledge to that consciousness. 
We do not live in a world where cucumbers grow on 
trees, or where human beings fail in their ever-recur- 
ring characteristics ; and we believe it possible to 
discover the kind of value which each source of 
knowledge may furnish toward the education of the 
child, with the expectation that we shall not find the 
choice of studies to be a matter of indifference. 

Without laying claim to a best analysis, we may 
use a customary division of the field of knowledge : 
(i) mathematical relations, (2) natural phenomena, 



70 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



(3) human action, (4) human thought, (5) aesthetic 
and ethical quaUties. The studies corresponding are 
(i) mathematics, (2) natural science, (3) history, (4) 
language and literature, (5) art and ethics. Mathe- 
matics treats of quantitative knowledge, furnishes a 
peculiar intellectual training, and makes possible all 
commerce, all great structures, and the higher de- 
velopments of physical science. Natural science 
acquaints us with the field of physical phenomena 
and of plant and animal life, is the best training in 
induction, and is largely the basis of our material 
civilization. History reveals the individual and our 
present civilization in the light of all human action, 
is a source of ethical training, and has high practical 
value for the problems of government and society. 
Literature reveals the ideal thought and the specu- 
lations of men, gives aesthetic and ethical culture, 
and in a practical way applies poetry to life. Art 
and ethics deal with distinct types of knowledge, cul- 
tivate the higher emotional powers, and, like ideal 
literature, set up standards of perfection in execu- 
tion and in conduct of life. 

The world in which we live is the world we are to 
know in order to adapt ourselves to it in thought, 
the world we are to know in order to gain power to 
work therein with success, the world we are to know 
as representing the thought of the Creator and the 
correlated nature of man, the world we are to know 
to gain the soul's highest realization, and, for these 
ends, to know in its various phases. Each depart- 
ment of study makes its own peculiar contribution 
to knowledge, each has its peculiar fitness for devel- 
oping some given power of the mind, each makes its 
own contribution in preparing the individual for the 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES. yi 

practical world. In three distinct ways does each 
subject have a peculiar value^for knowledge, for 
power, for practical life. 

While a classification of studies without cross 
divisions is impossible, we may say that the first four 
groups give us the power of knowledge for action ; 
the fifth, the feeling for perfection of action and 
rightness of action ; and these, in their exercise and 
their tendency, create the right kind of power in 
action. 

Can the exact absolute and relative value of each 
line of study be determined ? No ; but we may 
make approximate estimates through philosophical 
study of the relation of the mind to the world, 
through the history of education and the experience 
of practical teachers. Every position is tentative 
and subject to constant readjustment, with a closer 
approach to truth. A reinvestigation of many prob- 
lems through careful observation of children will 
doubtless make an important contribution to knowl- 
edge of values, if the experiments are conducted 
with a wisdom that takes them out of the realm of 
fads, and if the greatest thinkers are not given a 
seat too far back. Important as this kind of inves- 
tigation is, extreme advocates may undervalue the 
store of educational philosophy that has become 
common property. From Cain and Abel down, the 
child has always been the observed of all observers ; 
the adult man recognizes the nature of the child in 
his own nature, and has recollections of many of his 
first conscious experiences. From the time of the 
early philosophers, the data have been sufficient to 
discover universal truths. Child study serves, not 
so much to establish principles, as to bring the 



72 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



teacher's mind in close sympathy with the life of 
the child, in order to observe carefully facts for 
the application of principles. 

In an ideal course of general training, can there be, 
in any exact meaning, an equivalence of studies ? As 
well ask whether one sense can do the work of another 
sense in revealing the world to the mind. To be sure, 
the fundamental conceptions of the material world 
can be obtained through the sense of touch alone ; 
but we also attach importance to the revelations of 
sight and hearing, and these revelations have a differ- 
ent quality. He who lacks these other senses is de- 
fective in sources of soul development. So he who 
neglects important fields of knowledge lacks some- 
thing that is peculiar to them. Each study helps 
every other, and before special training begins each is 
to be used, up to the time when the student becomes 
conscious of its meaning. By contact with nature 
and society, the child, before the school period, gets 
an all-around education. He distinguishes numeri- 
cally, observes natural phenomena, notes the deeds of 
his fellows, gains the thoughts of others, and begins 
to perceive the qualities of beauty and right. The 
kindergarten promotes all lines of growth ; the pri- 
mary school continues them. Shall the secondary 
school be open to broad election ? At a time when 
some educators of strong influence are proclaiming 
the formal theory of education, that power, without 
reference to content, is the aim of study, and some 
universities encourage a wide choice of equivalents 
in preparation for admission, and the homes yield to 
the solicitation of. pupils to omit difficult subjects, it 
is important to answer the question in the light of the 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES. 



73 



previous analysis.. And we say no, for the simple 
reasons that not until the secondary period can the 
meaning of the various departments of knowledge be 
brought within the conscious understanding, not 
until then are the various powers developed to a con- 
siderable degree of conscious strength, not until then 
has the natural bent of the student been fairly tested. 
In this period one would hardly advocate the exclu- 
sive study, for instance, of history to the entire neg- 
lect of mathematics and physics ; nor would he ad- 
vocate the choice of mathematics to the entire neglect 
of history and literature. 

The question of college electives is to an extent an 
open one. But it is clear that when general educa- 
tion ends, special education should begin, and that 
indiscriminate choice of studies without purpose is 
no substitute, either for a fixed curriculum or for 
group election in a special line. We may fully ap- 
prove the freedom of modern university education, 
but not its license. Its freedom gives the opportu- 
nity to choose special and fitting lines of work for a 
definite purpose ; its license leads to evasion and 
dilettanteism. We hear of a senior who took for his 
electives Spanish, French, and lectures in music and 
art, not because they were strong courses in the line 
of his tastes and tendencies, but because they were 
the lines of least resistance. There appears to be a 
reactionary tendency toward a more careful guarding 
of college electives, together with a shortening of the 
college course, in order that genuine university work 
may begin sooner. If this tendency prevails, it will 
become possible to build all professional and other 
university courses upon a substantial foundation, and 
we shall no longer see law and medical students 



y^ EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

entering for a degree upon the basis of a grammar- 
school preparation. 

The opportunity to speciaHze, which is the real 
value of college election, is necessary even for general 
education. To know all subjects one must know one 
subject. The deepening of one kind of, knowledge 
deepens all knowledge. The strengthening of power 
in one direction strengthens the whole man. An 
education is not complete until one is fairly master 
of some one subject, which he may employ for enjoy- 
ment, for instruction, and for use in the world of 
practical activity. Here we reach the ultimate con- 
sideration on the intellectual side in estimating edu- 
cational values. 

We who are sometimes called conservative know 
that we have before us new problems or a reconsid- 
eration of old problems. We believe the trend of 
educational thought is right, however some may for a 
time wander in strange paths. We know that mental 
capacity, health, time, money, home obligations, 
proposed occupation, and even deviation from the 
normal type are all to be considered in planning the 
education of a pupil. But the deviations from ideal 
courses and standards should be made with ideals in 
view, a different proposition from denying the exist- 
ence or possibility of ideals. We know that the mind 
is a unit-being and a self-activity, that it develops as 
a whole, that there are no entities called faculties. 
But suppose the various psychical activities had never 
been classified, as they now are, in accordance with 
the facts of consciousness, the usage of language and 
literature, and the convenience of psychology, what 
a herald of fresh progress would he be who would 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES. 



n 



first present mental science in clear groupings ! We 
may call the world one, but it has many phases ; the 
mind is one, but it has many phases ; these are more 
or less correlated, and our theory of educational values 
stands. We know that interest is the sine qua non 
of success in education, and nothing is more benefi- 
cent than the emphasis given this fact to-day. We 
also know that pleasure is not the only, not even 
the most valuable, interest ; and that the disa- 
greeable character of a study is not always a cri- 
terion for its rejection. The pleasure theory will 
hardly overcome the importance of a symmetrical 
education. 

In regard to some things, however, some of us 
must be permitted to move slowly. We must use the 
principle of '' apperception," and interpret the new 
in the light of that which has for a long time been 
familiar — attach it to the " apperception mass " ; we 
must be indulged in our right to use the ** culture- 
epoch " theory and advance by degrees from the 
barbaric stage to that of deeper insight ; we must 
*' concentrate " (concentre) with established doctrines 
other doctrines that present large claims, and learn 
their "■ correlations " and " coordinations." 

A new object or idea must be related to and ex- 
plained by the knowledge already in mind ; it must 
be so placed and known, or it is not an idea for us. 
If " apperception " means the act of explaining a new 
idea by the whole conscious content of the child's 
mind, then it is the recognized process of all mental 
growth. In a given study, topics must be arranged 
in logical order, facts must be so organized as to con- 
stitute a consistent whole ; important relations with 
other studies^ must be noted, and one subject must 



--6 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

be made to help another as opportunity arises. If 
" correlation " means to unite and make clear parts 
of subjects and subjects by discovery of valuable 
mutual relations, then it is a vital principle of all good 
teaching. Studies, while preserving their integrity, 
must be adjusted to each other in time and sequence 
so that a harmonious result may be produced. If 
** coordination " means the harmonious adjustment of 
the independent functions of departments of study, 
we recognize it as an old acquaintance. 

If the theory of '' culture-epochs " finds a parallel, 
in order of development, between race and individual, 
and throws light upon the selection of material for 
each stage of the child's growth, then let the theory 
be used for all it is worth. Its place, however, will 
be a subordinate one. Here are the world and the 
present civilization by means of which the child is to 
be educated, to which he is to be adjusted. Select 
subjects with reference to nature as known by modern 
science, with reference to modern civilization, and 
the hereditary accumulation of power in the child to 
acquire modern conceptions. ^ 

If '* concentration " means subordinating all other 
subjects of learning to a primary subject, as history 
or literature, which is to be used as a centre through- 
out the elementary period, we refuse to give it a 
place as an important method in education. In- 
trinsically there is no such thing as a primary centre 
except the child himself. He possesses native im- 
pulses that reach out toward the field of knowledge, 
and in every direction. It is difficult to imagine a 
child to be without varied interests. Did you ever 
see a boy who failed to enumerate his possessions, 
investigate the interior of his automatic toy, delight 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES. yy 

in imaginative tales, applaud mock-heroic deeds, and 
appreciate beautiful objects and right action? If the 
child lacks normal development and has not the ap- 
perceiving mind for the various departments of 
knowledge, create new centres of apperception and 
interest, cultivate the neglected and stunted powers. 
The various distinct aspects of the objective world 
suggest the selection of studies ; the nature of the 
mind suggests the manner in which the elements of 
knowledge are to be organized. The parts of a subject 
must be distinctly known before they are correlated ; 
subjects must be distinctly known before they are 
viewed in a system of philosophy. Knowledge is not 
organized by artificial associations, but by observing 
the well-known laws of classification and reasoning. 
Moreover, all laws of thought demand that a subject 
be developed in a definite and continuous way, and 
that side illustration be employed only for the pur- 
pose of clearness. In practice the method of con- 
centration can but violate this principle. 

We may ask whether apperception, correlation, 
coordination, and concentration are anything but a 
recognition of the laws of association. The laws of 
association in memory are nothing but the law of 
acquisition of knowledge, as all good psychology 
points out. These laws include relations of time, 
place, likeness, analogy, difference, and cause. Add 
to these laws logical sequence in the development of 
a subject, and you have all the principles of the 
methods named. Have these investigations an im- 
portant value ? Yes. They explain and emphasize 
pedagogical truths that have been neglected. Hav- 
ing performed their mission and having added to the 
progress of educational theory, they will give way 



78 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

to new investigations. This is the history of all 
progress. 

The subject of interest deserves a further thought. 
It goes without saying that all a man thinks, feels, 
and does centres around his own personality, and, in 
that sense, is a self-interest. But we are not to infer 
that, therefore, interest must be pleasure. We are 
born with native impulses to action, impulses that 
reach out in benevolence and compassion for the 
good of others, impulses that reach out toward the 
truth and beauty and goodness of the world, without 
regard to pleasure or reward. These impulses tend 
toward the perfection of our being, and the reward 
lies in that perfection, the possession of a strong and 
noble intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical character. 
The work of the teacher is to invite these better 
tendencies by presenting to them the proper objects 
for their exercise in the world of truth, beauty, and 
right. Interest and action will follow, and, later, the 
satisfaction that attends right development. When- 
ever this spontaneous interest does not appear and 
cannot be invited, the child should face the fact that 
some things must be, because they are required, and 
are for his good. When a course of action is ob- 
viously the best, and inclination does not lead the 
way, duty must come to the rescue. 

We are not touching this matter as an old ethical 
controversy, but because it is a vital practical prob- 
lem of to-day in education, because the pleasure 
theory is bad philosophy, bad psychology, bad 
ethics, bad pedagogy, a caricature of man, contrary 
to our consciousness of the motives of even our or- 
dinary useful acts, a theory that will make a genera- 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES. 



79 



tion of weaklings. Evolution does not claim to 
show that pleasure is always a criterion of useful 
action. Herbert Spencer in his " Ethics " says: '* In 
many cases pleasures are not connected with actions 
which must be performed nor pains with actions 
which must be avoided, but contrariwise." He post- 
pones the complete coincidence of pleasure with ideal 
action to the era of perfect moralization. We await 
the evolutionist's millennium. Much harm as well 
as much good has been done in the name of Spencer 
by well-meaning teachers, and much harm has been 
done in the name of physiological psychologists ; we 
would avoid a misuse of their noble contributions to 
educational insight. Listen to a view of physiological 
psychology with reference to the law of habit : " Do 
every day or two something for no other reason than 
that you would rather not do it. The man who has 
daily inured himself to habits of concentrated atten- 
tion, energetic volition, and self-denial in unneces- 
sary things, will stand like a tower when everything 
rocks around him and when his softer fellow-mortals 
are winnowed like chaff in the blast." The fact is, 
it is impossible to create character, energy, and suc- 
cess without effort that is often painful. This view 
is an essential part of our theory of educational 
values. 



POWER AS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE. 

Try to imagine a material world without force — 
no cohesion, no resistance, no gravitation, no sound, 
no light, no sign from the outward world, no active 
mind to receive a sign. Now try to imagine knowl- 
edge without power, a mind that is but a photo- 
graphic sheet — no active perception, no imagination, 
no reflection upon ideas, no impulses ending in 
action. On the other hand, mental power without 
knowledge is inconceivable. One without knowledge 
is in the condition of the newly born infant. 

As difficult to understand as the relation between 
matter and force, between spirit and body, between 
thought and its sign, is the relation between knowl- 
edge and power. In a way we may attempt to sepa- 
rate and distinguish between them, by a process of 
emphasizing the one or the other. Knowledge, in 
the sense of information, means an acquaintance with 
nature in its infinite variety of kind, form, and color, 
and with man in history and literature ; mental 
power is the ability to gain knowledge, and the mo- 
tive to use it for growth and for valuable ends. 
Mere knowledge serenely contemplates nature and 
history as a panorama, without serious reflection or 
effort. Power is able to reflect upon knowledge, and 
to find motives for progress and useful action. 
Knowledge is the product of the information method; 
power, of the method of self-activity. 



POWER AS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE. 8 1 

As we cannot divorce matter and force, so it ap- 
pears we cannot clearly separate knowledge and men- 
tal power ; the distinction is artificial and almost 
fanciful. The one cannot exist without the other ; 
they are the opposite sides of the shield. Through 
knowledge comes power. Knowledge is the mate- 
rial for reflection and action. Knowledge, as it were, 
creates the mind, and is both the source of power 
and the occasion for its use. 

We recall the familiar caricature of the Chinese 
lack of original power. A merchant negotiated with 
a Chinaman for the manufacture of a few thousand 
plates of a certain pattern, and furnished a sample 
that by chance was cracked. The plates arrived in 
due season, admirably imitating the original — and 
every one was cracked. No need in this instance to 
employ the mandate given by a choleric superin- 
tendent to an employee, who on one occasion thought 
for himself — '^ I have told you repeatedly you have 
no business to think ! " The Chinese character may 
be expressed by a parody on a familiar stanza : 

For they are the same their fathers have been ; 
They see the same sights their fathers have seen, 
They drink the same stream and view the same sun, 
And run the same course their fathers have run. 

A timorous cow gazing wistfully over the garden 
gate at the forbidden succulent vegetables, and ner- 
vously rubbing her nose by accident against the 
latch, may open the gate and gain an entrance, and 
afterward repeat the process. A new and peculiar 
fastening will prevent any further depredations. An 
ingenious boy will find the means to undo any kind 

6 



32 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

of unique fastening to the gate that bars him from 
the watermelon patch. Charles Lamb humorously 
describes how the Chinese learned to eat roast pig. 
A house burned and the family pig perished in the 
flames ; a disconsolate group of people stood around 
viewing the ruins, when by accident one touched 
the pig and, burning his finger, thrust it in his mouth 
to cool it ; the taste was good, and he repeated the 
the process. Soon there were marvellously frequent 
conflagrations — all the neighbors burned their houses 
to roast their pigs, that being the only method they 
had learned. 

From these somewhat trivial illustrations, we may 
readily draw a few inferences : First, ingenuity of 
mind for novel conditions distinguishes man from 
the brutes ; second, the Chinese method of educa- 
tion emphasizes too much the information side — it is 
not good ; third, the human mind is ingenious when 
it is rightly educated and has a strong motive ; 
fourth, ingenuity is the power that should grow from 
education. In this idea — ingenuity of mind — is the 
very essence of what we mean when we emphasize 
the power side of the soul. 

The problem of education is to make men think. 
Tradition, authority, formalism have not the place 
in education which they formerly occupied. May it 
not be that we have so analyzed and formulated the 
work of the schools that formalism and method have 
somewhat taken the place of genuine work, full of 
the life and spirit that make power? We may dis- 
cover that the criticisms from certain high sources 
have an element of truth in them. A certain routine 
may easily become a sacred code, a law of the tables, 
and any variation therefrom an impiety. 



POWER AS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE. 83 

A person possesses power when his conception 
ploughs through the unfurrowed tissue of his brain 
to seek its proper affinity, and unites with it to form 
a correct judgment. A person who is merely in- 
structed does not construct new lines of thought to 
bring ideas into novel relations ; he does not origi- 
nate or progress. An original thinker masses all con- 
gruous ideas around a dimly concei-ved notion and 
there is a new birth of an idea, a genuine child of 
the brain. His ingenuity will open a gate or con- 
struct a philosophical system. 

Every student remembers well the stages in his 
education when there was a new awakening by 
methods that invited thought, when a power was 
gained to conceive and do something not stated in 
the books or imparted by the teacher. In the schools, 
even of to-day, teachers are not always found who 
can impart elementary science in the spirit of sci- 
ence, who can successfully invite speculation as to 
causes, who can teach accurate perception, who can 
interpret events in history, train pupils in the use of 
reference books, or invite original thought in mathe- 
matics. There is no high school which does not 
yearly receive pupils not trained in original power, 
no college which does not annually winnow out fresh- 
men, because they have not gained the power to 
grapple with virile methods. The defect is sometimes 
innate, but it is oftener due to false methods of in- 
struction. Our great problem is to make scholars 
who are not hopeless and helpless in the presence of 
what they have not learned. 

The plant must have good soil, water and air and 
sun, care and pruning, in order to grow, but it grows 
of itself, gains strength by proper nourishment. The 



84 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



aggregation of material about the plant does not 
constitute its growth. The plant must assimilate',! 
the juices of life must flow through it. 

The teacher does his best work when he makes all 
conditions favorable for the self-activity of the pupil. 
Such conditions create a lively interest in the objects 
and forces of nature, invite examination of facts and 
discovery of relations, arouse the imagination to con- 
ceive results, awaken query and reflection, stimulate 
the emotional life toward worthy and energetic 
action, and make the pupil ever progressive. 

An article in one of our magazines strongly em- 
phasizes the methods that make power. It con- 
siders the kind of training that finally makes accurate 
thinkers, that makes original, progressive men, men 
of power, and safe and wise citizens. The author 
shows that clear observation, accurate recording of 
facts, just inference, and strong, choice expression 
are most important ends to be attained by the work 
of the schools, and that these ends become the 
means for correcting all sorts of unjust, illogical con- 
clusions as to politics and morals. 

There is much profound thought in the view main- 
tained. Unjust inferences, fallacies, are nearly the 
sum of the world's social and political evils. False 
ideas are held as true concerning all sorts of current 
problems — notions that take possession of men's 
minds without logical reflection. The fallacy of con- 
founding sequence with cause is almost universal. 
All kinds of subjective and objective duties suffer 
from illogical minds. 

To correct many errors and evils, to make think- 
ing, useful men, we must emphasize the processes 



POWER AS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE. 85 

recommended : (i) observation, (2) faithful record- 
ing, (3) just inference, (4) satisfactory expression. 

The author shows wherein the work of the grades 
fails to give the desired results. He holds that 
arithmetic, so emphasized, contributes nothing be- 
cause it employs necessary reasoning, and does not 
give practice in inference from observation and ex- 
perience, a process which develops scientific judg- 
ment. Inductive reasoning alone can give scientific 
power. Reading, writing, spelling, geography as 
usually taught, contribute but little ; grammar does 
not add much. 

For invention, for correct estimates of the prob- 
lems of society, government, and morals, the origi- 
nal power of inference from observed facts is neces- 
sary. It is asked : Do our schools give this power 
to a satisfactory and attainable degree ? It is claimed 
in the article that the high schools and colleges fail 
more or less, because so much time is given to mem- 
ory work and formulated results. In the high schools 
the work to be most emphasized is not chosen with 
discrimination. The courses include too many stud- 
ies, not well done. There should be fewer studies 
so pursued as to give power. 

May it not be well to make the inquiry in all 
grades as to what proportion of the work contributes 
toward the final result of accurate reflection upon 
the world of facts. Let us again repeat the author's 
list in logical order: (i) observation, (2) recording, 
as in noting experiments, (3) inference, (4) expression. 

President Eliot's paper here referred to admirably 
emphasizes the methods that make power. Perhaps 
the author gives too little importance to knowledge 
as the basis of power, and fails to emphasize the 



36 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

aesthetic power and the value of ideals. It is true 
that poetry implies accurate observation, fine dis- 
crimination, discovery of just relations, and true in- 
sight, but it is equally true that science study does 
not make poets. 

The times have changed. The old idea of the 
scholar Avas of one who, in the serene contemplation 
of truth, beauty, and goodness, found a never-fail- 
ing source of delight for himself, and felt little obli- 
gation to the world that sustained him, or the social 
environment that nurtured and humanized him. 
The devotion to truth for its own sake, the love of 
nature in repose, the admiration of great deeds, 
fine sentiments and noble thoughts, were for him 
sufificient, as if he were isolated in a world of his 
own. We do not depreciate such interest, for life is 
Avorth nothing without it. But there is a demand 
for action, a call to externalize the power of one's 
being. Each man is a part of the all, from eternity 
destined to be a factor in the progress of all. The 
thoughts and impulses that evaporate and accom- 
plish nothing are not of much more value to the in- 
dividual than to his neighbor. '' Do something " is 
the command alike of religion and of the nature of 
our physical being. Every sentiment and idea that 
leads to action forms a habit in the mysterious inner 
chambers of our nervous system for action, and we 
gain in power, grow in mental stature, day by day. 

Power comes through knowledge. There may be 
too great a tendency to emphasize power to the loss 
of that knowledge necessary to marshal in one field 
of view the necessary facts. Imagine a judge trying 



POWER AS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE. 8/ 

to reach a decision without the points in evidence 
before his mind ; a statesman that would interpret 
current events without a knowledge of history ; an 
investigator in science who had not before him the 
results of the investigations of others. 

Ideally, knowledge should be varied and compre- 
hensive ; it should cover, at least in an elementary 
way, the entire field of nature and of man. Then 
only is the student best prepared for his life work, if 
he would make the most of it. A man lost in a for- 
est directs not his steps wisely ; when thoroughly 
acquainted with his surroundings, he moves forward 
with confidence. One who has trained all the mus- 
cles of his body delivers a blow with vigor. One 
who has trained all the powers of his mind summons 
to his aid the energy of all, when he acts in a given 
direction. His knowledge is the light thrown on his 
endeavor. 

This view is opposed to the extreme doctrine that 
knowledge is of little value. Knowledge is necessary 
to power ; the abuse lies in not making it the basis of 
power. 

This theory also militates strongly against the 
position that a student should specialize at too early 
a period, before he has traversed in an elementary 
way the circle of studies and gained a harmonized 
general development. 

The discussion of a growing fallacy naturally ap- 
pears in this place, that it makes no difference what 
knowledge is used provided it gives power. It does 
make a difference whether one gains power in deci- 
phering an ancient inscription in hieroglyphics, or 
gains it by studying a language which contains the 
generic concepts of our native tongue, or in pursuing 



88 EDUCATION AND- LIFE. 

a scientific study which acquaints him with the laws 
of nature's forces. In the one case, while the power 
is great, the knowledge is small ; in the other, an 
essential view of the thought of mankind or of the 
nature of the world in which we live is gained, and 
the knowledge is broadly useful for various exercise 
of power. 

Another fallacy is the doctrine that actual execu- 
tion in practical ways alone gives power. It may 
give ready specific power of a limited kind, but it 
may leave the man childlike and helpless in the 
presence of anything but his specialty. 

Here we find an argument for higher education, for 
an accumulation of knowledge and power that comes 
through prolonged labor in the field of learning, 
under wise guidance and through self-effort. Many 
a youth, through limited capacity, limited time and 
means, must begin special education before he has 
laid a broad foundation, but this is not the ideal 
method. The true teacher will always hold the 
highest ideals before the pupils, will guide them in 
the path of general education, until that education 
becomes what is called liberal. The broad-minded 
men who conduct schools for special education are 
strong advocates of the highest degree of general 
training as a foundation. 

Four years of college life, with the methods of to- 
day, more than quadruple the capital of the graduate 
of the secondary school. They broaden the field of 
knowledge, and enlarge the capacity for doing. The 
world is full of demands for men of knowledge and 
power. There is to-day a lack of men sufficiently 
equipped in knowledge, power, and character to take 
the direction, for instance, of important college de- 



POWER AS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE. 89 

partments. Men of power and skill are in demand 
everywhere, and not enough can be found for re- 
sponsible positions. One half the fault is insufficient 
education. 

There is another phase of power that must not be 
neglected, the power to enjoy, to be rich in 
emotional life. Knowledge, properly pursued, is a 
source of rich and refined intellectual emotions. 
There is joy in discovery, joy in the freedom and 
grasp of thought. 

^Esthetic power, based upon fine discrimination, 
finds a perpetual joy in sky and sea, and mountain 
and forest, in music and poetry, in sentiment and 
song. Our Teutonic ancestors were better seers than 
we. The morning sun and the midnight darkness 
were perpetually to them a new birth. The leaves 
whispered to them divine messages ; the storms and 
the seasons, the fruitful earth, were full of wonder 
and sacred mysteries. They were poets. This 
matter-of-fact age will yet return to the primitive 
regard for nature, a regard enlightened and refined 
by science. Men will yet find in the most common- 
place fact of nature mystery, poetry, ground for 
reverence, and faith in a God. 

The power of enjoyment alone does not give a 
fruitful life. It is in the moment of action that we 
gain the habit that makes power for action. As a 
philosopher recently expressed it : Do not allow 
your finer emotions to evaporate without finding 
expression in some useful act, if it is nothing but 
speaking kindly to your grandmother, or giving up 
your seat in a horse car. 

There has been a weak and harmful philosophy in 



90 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



vogue for years that would place the natural and the 
useful in the line of the agreeable. Even extreme 
evolution fails signally to show that the agreeable is 
always teleological, that is, always directed toward 
useful ends. The latest teaching of physiological 
psychology takes us back to the stern philosophy of 
the self-denying Puritan, and shows that we must con- 
quer our habitual inclinations, and encounter some dis- 
agreeable duty every day to prepare for the emergen- 
cies that demand men of stern stuff. George Eliot 
proclaims the same thought with philosophical in- 
sight, that we are not to wait for great opportunities 
for glory, but by daily, drudging performance of 
little duties are to get ready for the arrival of the 
great opportunities. We must prepare for our eagle 
flights by many feeble attempts of our untried 
pinions. 

If one but work, no matter in what line of higher 
scholastic pursuit, he will in a few years waken to a 
consciousness of power that makes him one of the 
leaders. There is every encouragement to the 
student to persevere, in the certain assurance that 
sooner or later he will reach attainments beyond his 
present clear conception. 

Our inheritance is a glorious one. The character 
of the Anglo-Saxons is seen throughout their history. 
Amid the clash of weapons they fought with a fierce 
energy and a strange delight. They rode the 
mighty billows and sang heroic songs with the wild 
joy of the sea fowl. Later we find them contend- 
ing earnestly for their beliefs. Then they grew into 
the Puritan sternness of character, abounding in the 
sense of duty. Their character has made them the 
leaders and conquerors of the world. It finds ex- 



POWER AS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE. 



91 



pression in the progress and influence of America. 
This energy has gradually become more and more 
refined and humanized, and, in its highest and best 
form, it is the heritage of every young man ; and by 
the pride of ancestry, by the character inherited, by 
the opportunity of his age, he is called upon to wield 
strongly the weapon of Thor and hammer out his 
destiny with strong heart and earnest purpose. 



MORAL TRAINING. 

We shall not discuss the philosophical systems 
which underlie ethical theories, nor the theories 
themselves which consider the nature of the moral 
sense and the supreme aim of life, but shall treat 
practical ethics as a part of didactics, and as a part 
of that unspoken influence which should be the con- 
stant ally of instruction. It is not the purpose to 
present anything new, but rather to give confidence 
in methods that are well known and are successfully 
employed by skilful and devoted teachers. 

The formation of right habits is the first step 
toward good character. Aristotle gives this fact 
special emphasis. Here are some detached sentences 
from his ethics : " Moral virtue is the outcome of 
habit, and, accordingly, its name is derived by a 
slight deflection from habit. . . . It is by playing 
the harp that both good and bad harpists are pro- 
duced, and the case of builders and all artisans is 
similar, as it is by building well that they will be 
good builders, and by building badly that they will 
be bad builders. . . . Accordingly, the difference 
between one training of the habits and another, from 
early days, is not a light matter, but is serious or all- 
important." Aristotle here expresses a truth that 
has become one of the tritest. All mental disposi- 
tions are strengthened by repetition. We learn to 



MORAL TRAINING. 



93 



observe by observing, to remember by exercising 
memory, to create by training the imagination, 
to reason by acts of inference. Passions grow by 
indulgence and diminish by restraint ; the finer 
emotions gain strength by use. Courage, endurance, 
firmness are established by frequently facing dangers 
and difficulties. By practice, disagreeable acts may 
become a pleasure. 

It is by practice that the mind gets possession of 
the body, that the separate movements of the child 
become correlated, and the most complex acts are 
performed with ease and accuracy. Physiological psy- 
chology has confirmed and strengthened the doctrine 
of habit. The functions of the brain and mental 
actions are correlated. A nerve tract once estab- 
lished in the brain, and action along that line recurs 
with increasing spontaneity. New lines of communi- 
cation are formed with difficulty. Each physical act 
controlled by lower nerve centres leaves a tendency 
in those centres to repeat the act. 

The inference is obvious and important. What- 
ever we wish the adult man to be, we must help him 
to become by early practice. Childhood is the 
period when tendencies are most easily established. 
The mind is teachable and receives impressions 
readily ; around those cluster kindred impressions, 
and the formation of character is already begun. 
The brain and other nerve centres are plastic, and 
readily act in any manner not inconsistent with their 
natural functions. As they begin they tend to act 
thereafter. 

Dr. Harris called attention a few years ago to 
the ethical import of the ordinary requirements and 
prohibitions of the schoolroom. Promptness, obedi- 



g^ EDUCATION AND LIFE, 

ence, silence, respect, right positions in sitting and 
standing, regard for the rights of others, were named 
as helping to form habits that would make the child 
self-controlled and fit him to live in society. 

Whatever you would wish the child to do and be- 
come, that let him practise. We learn to do, not by 
knowing, but by knowing and then doing. Ethical 
teaching, tales of heroic deeds, soul-stirring fiction 
that awakens sympathetic emotions may accomplish 
but little, unless in the child's early life regard for 
the right, little acts of heroism, and deeds of 
sympathy are employed ; unless the ideas and feel- 
ing find expression in action, and so become a part of 
the child's power and tendency. George Eliot would 
have us make ready for great deeds by constant per- 
formance of little duties at hand. 

Right habit is the only sure foundation for charac- 
ter. Sudden resolutions to change the tenor of life, 
sudden conversion from an evil life to one of ideal 
goodness are usually failures, because the old tend- 
encies will hold on grimly until the new impulse, 
however great, has gradually evaporated. To pre- 
pare for the highest moral life and a persevering 
religious life, early habits of the right kind are the 
only secure foundation. 

The teacher may have confidence in the value of 
requiring of pupils practice in self-restraint, practice 
in encountering difificulties that demand a little of 
courage, a little even of heroism — and each day 
furnishes opportunities. Pleasure may not always 
attend their efforts, but pleasure will come soon 
enough as a reward, in consciousness of strength and 
of noble development. Often we do wrong because it 
is pleasant, and avoid the right because it is painful. 



MORAL TRAINING. 



95 



By habit we come to find pleasure in right action, 
and then the action is a true virtue as held by the 
Greek philosophers. Aristotle remarks: " Hence the 
importance of having had a certain training from 
very early days, as Plato says, such a training as pro- 
duces pleasure and pain at the right objects ; for this 
is the true education." 

The personality of the teacher is a potent factor 
in moral education. Perfection is not expected of 
the teacher ; none ever attained it except the Great 
Prototype. All that we can say of the best man is 
that he averages high. The teacher who does not 
possess to a somewhat marked degree some quality 
eminently worthy of imitation will hardly be of the 
highest value in his profession. I remember with 
gratitude two men, each of whom impressed me with 
a noble quality that made an important contribution 
at the time to my thought, feeling, action, and 
growth. The ideal of one was action — energetic, 
persevering action — and he was a notable example 
of his ideal. His precept without his example would 
have been almost valueless. The other was a noble 
advocate of ideal thought, and his mind was always 
filled with the highest conceptions ; moreover, in 
many large ways he exemplified his precept. His 
acquaintance was worth more than that of a thousand 
others who are satisfied with a commonplace view of 
life. 

Minds that are not speculative, are not ingenious 
and creative, will hardly make their own ideals, or 
even be taught by abstractions. They can, however, 
readily comprehend the living embodiment of virtue, 
and there is still enough of our ancestral monkey 



q6 education and life. 

imitativeness remaining to give high value to ex- 
ample. 

And it is important that the influence of the 
teacher shall not be merely a personal magnetism 
that influences only when it is present, but a quality 
that shall command respect in memory and help to 
establish principles of conduct. The influence should 
be one that will be regarded without the sanction of 
the personal relation. He who is wholly ruled either 
by fear or by love gains no power of self-control, and 
will be at a loss when thrown upon his own respon- 
sibility in the world of conflict and temptations. 
Character must be formed by habit and guided by 
principle. 

The world's moral heroes are few. Since they can 
not be our daily companions, we turn to biography 
and history, that their personality and deeds may be 
painted in our imagination. Concrete teaching is 
adapted to children, and select tales of great and 
noble men, vivid descriptions of deeds worthy of 
emulation may early impress their minds with un- 
fading pictures that will stand as archetypes for 
their future character and conduct. Hence the value 
of mythology, of Bible stories, and Plutarch. 

It is unnecessary to add that such literature should 
be at the command of every teacher, and there is 
enough adapted to every grade of work. Through- 
out the period of formal historic study important use 
should be made of the ethical character of men and 
events. The pupil thus fills his mind with examples 
from which he may draw valuable inferences, and with 
which he may illustrate principles of action. The 
ethical sense is developed through relations of the 



MORAL TRAINING. 



97 



individual to society, and the broader the scope of 
vision, the more just will be the estimate of human 
action. 

Ideal literature, the better class of fiction and 
poetry, which not only reaches the intellect, but 
touches the feeling and brings the motive powers in 
harmony with ideal characters, deeds, and aspira- 
tions, may have the highest value in forming the 
ethical life of the pupil. Here is presented the very 
essence of the best ideas and feelings of humanity — 
thoughts that burn, emotions of divine quality, de- 
sires that go beyond our best realizations, acts that 
are heroic — all painted in vivid colors. By reading 
we enter into the life of greater souls, we share their 
aspirations, we make their treasure our own. A 
large share of the moralization of the world is done 
by this process of applying poetry to life. 

There is, however, one important caution. There 
is a difference between sentiment and sentimentality. 
The latter weakens the mind and will ; it is to be 
avoided as slow poison that will finally undermine a 
strong constitution. There must be a certain vigor 
in ideal sentiment that will not vanish in mawkish 
feeling, but will give tone for noble action. It is a 
question whether sentiment that sheds tears, and 
never, in consequence, does an additional praise- 
worthy act, has worth. You know the literature that 
leaves you with a feeling of stupid satiety, and you 
know that which gives you the feeling of strength in 
your limbs, and clearness in your intellect, and earn- 
estness in your purpose, and determination in your 
will. 

Use ideal literature from the earliest school days 
of the child ; choose it with a wisdom that comes 

7 



q8 education and life. 

from a careful analysis of the subject and a knowl- 
edge of the adaptation of a particular selection to 
the end proposed. And when you reach the formal 
study of literature, find in it something more than 
dates, events, grammar, and rhetoric ; find in it 
beauty, truth, goodness, and insight that will expand 
the mind and improve character. 

There is much truth in the criticism that con- 
demns precept without example ; the two go to- 
gether, the one is a complement of the other. We 
act in response to ideas, and a rule of action clearly 
understood and adopted will often be applied in a 
hundred specific instances that fall under it. A 
teacher of tact and skill can gain the interest of 
children to know the meaning and understand the 
application of many rich generalizations from human 
experiences that have passed into proverbs. The 
natural result of conduct which we condemn may 
be pointed out, with often a noticeable increase of 
regard for duty and prudence. We may not ex- 
pect consistency of character, firmness of purpose, 
rigid observance of honesty, truthfulness, honor, 
and sympathy until the course of life is directed 
by principles that have taken firm hold of the 
mind. 

When moral instruction in school passes into what 
the boys call preaching, the zealous teacher often 
dulls the point of any possible interest in the sub- 
ject, and thereby defeats his purpose. Sometimes 
we, in our feeling of responsibility, trust too little to 
the better instincts of childhood, the influence of 
good surroundings, and the leavening power of all 
good work in the regular course of instruction. 



MORAL TRAINING. 



99 



For the purpose of moral instruction in the schools 
we should take the broad view of the Greek ethics. 
As summed up by Professor Green the Good Will 
aims (i) to know what is true and create what is 
beautiful ; (2) to endure pain and fear ; (3) to resist 
the allurements of false pleasure ; (4) to take for 
one's self and to give to others, not what one is in- 
clined to, but what is due. This is larger than the 
conventional moral code. It makes virtues not only 
of justice and temperance, but of courage and wis- 
dom. By implication it condemns cowardice and 
lazy ignorance. It urges one to strive for the reali- 
zation of all his best possibilities, to enlarge his pow- 
ers, his usefulness, and aim at the gradual perfection 
of his being through the worthy use of all his en- 
ergies. It does not dwell morbidly on petty dis- 
tinctions of casuistry, but generously expands the soul 
to receive wisdom, the wisdom that regards all good. 

We are creatures of numerous native impulses, all 
useful in their proper exercise. Each impulse is sus- 
ceptible of growth until it becomes predominant. 
The lower animals follow their instincts. Man is 
rational, has the power to discriminate, to estimate 
right and wrong, to educate and be educated. He 
is called upon to subordinate some impulses and to 
cultivate others. The child is full of power of ac- 
tion, and it must be exercised in some direction. 
The work of the teacher is to invite the native im- 
pulses that reach out toward right and useful things, 
by offering the proper objects for their exercise. 
When these tendencies of the child's being are en- 
couraged, his growth will be ethical. 

What is the relation of the doctrine of duty to 



lOO EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

the practical subject in hand ? This is a question 
that rests upon the broad foundation of philosophy 
and religion, and we cannot discuss the grounds of 
behef. We may believe that the sense of duty is 
indispensable to moral character. True, much has 
been done in the name of duty that has been harm- 
ful and repellent. Many things have been thought 
to be duty that would rule healthful spontaneity 
and cheerfulness and needful recreation out of life, 
and place the child under a solemn restraint that 
rests on his spirit like an incubus and drives him to 
rebellion and sin. We do not mean duty in this 
caricature of the reality. But this is a world in 
which the highest good is to be obtained by courage 
to overcome evil and difficulty. The great Fichte 
said : *' I have found out now that man's will is free, 
and that not happiness, but worthiness is the end of 
our being." And Professor Royce in the same vein 
says : " The spiritual life isn't a gentle or an easy 
thing. . . . Spirituality consists in being heroic 
enough to accept the tragedy of existence, and to 
glory in the strength wherewith it is given to the 
true lords of life to conquer this tragedy, and to 
make their world, after all, divine." In the name of 
evolution and physiological psychology much good 
has been done in driving to the realm of darkness, 
whence it emanated, the spirit of harshness and cruelty 
in education and in discipline ; at the same time 
much harm has been done by superficial interpreters 
by the attempt to make all education and training 
a pleasure. The highest good cannot be gained 
without struggle. Character cannot be formed with- 
out struggle. You and I would give nothing for 
acquisitions that have cost us nothing. While the 



MORAL TRAINING. lOI 

child's will is to be invited in the right direction by 
every worthy motive that tends to make the path 
pleasant, the child at the same time should know by 
daily experience that some things must be because 
they are right, because they are part of his duty ; 
that they may be at first disagreeable and require 
stern effort. Only then will he be prepared to re- 
sist temptation, and to actively pursue a course that 
will lead toward the perfection of his being and to- 
ward a life of usefulness. Along the paths of pleas- 
ure are the wrecks of innumerable lives, and this 
view is one of the greatest practical importance in 
the every-day work of the schoolroom. 

All proper education is ethical education. How 
the teacher encourages the acquisition of truth ! 
With what care he corrects error in experiment and 
inference ! With what zeal he leads the pupil to 
further knowledge ! With what feeling he points 
out beauty in natural forms and in literary art ! 
With what hope he encourages him to overcome 
difficulties ! With what solicitude he regards his 
ways and his choice of company ! What use he 
makes of every opportunity to emphasize a lesson; 
of justice in this little society of children, which is 
in many ways a type of the larger society into which 
the child is to enter ! If teachers are learned and 
skilful, and of strong character, if they awaken inter- 
est in studies and not disgust, if they have insight 
into the moral order of the world as revealed in all 
departments of learning, the whole curriculum of 
study, from the kindergarten to the university, will 
be a disclosure of ethical conceptions, a practice ofi 
right activity, an encouragement of right aim. If 



102 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

the better tendencies of the child's nature are re- 
pelled instead of invited, in so far will instruction 
lack the ethical element. And herein lies the great 
responsibility of the teacher for his own education, 
methods, and personal influence. 

What are the schools doing for moral training? 
We believe they are doing much that is satisfactory 
and encouraging. The public schools have at their 
command the various ethical forces. They form 
right habits by every-day requirements of the school- 
room ; they provide the personal influence of teach- 
ers whose good character is the first passport to 
their position ; they employ the lessons of history 
and literature, and in distinct ways impart principles 
of right conduct ; they inspire courage to overcome 
difficulties ; they direct the better impulses of chil- 
dren toward discovery in the great world of truth, 
and, by the very exercise of power required in the 
process of education, prepare them for life. 



CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT? 

On a certain occasion Socrates assumed the role 
of listener, while Protagoras discoursed upon the 
theme *' Can Virtue Be Taught ? " Protagoras shows 
that there are some essential qualities which, regard- 
less of specific calling, should be common to all men, 
such as justice, temperance, and holiness — in a word, 
manly virtue. He holds it absurd and contrary to 
experience to assume that virtue cannot be taught. 
He says that, in fact, " Education and admonition 
commence in the first years of childhood, and last 
to the very end of life." Mother and nurse, and 
father and tutor ceaselessly set forth to the child 
what is just or unjust, honorable or dishonorable, 
holy or unholy ; the teachers look to his manners, 
and later put in his hands the works of the great 
poets, full of moral examples and teachings ; the 
instructor of the lyre imparts harmony and rhythm ; 
the master of gymnastics trains the body to be 
minister to the virtuous mind ; and when the pupil 
has completed his work with the instructors, the 
state compels him to learn the laws, and live after 
the pattern which they furnish. " Cease to wonder, 
Socrates, whether virtue can be taught." 

We can but accept the principles of Protagoras, 
that the essential qualities of a rational and moral 
being are to be considered at each stage of growth 
and in all relations of life ; that all education is to 



104 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

be the ally of virtue. We can but accept, too, the 
fact that guidance, instruction, and authority help to 
bring the child to self-realization, and help to de- 
termine modes of conduct. The remaining question 
relates to the ways and means adapted to a given 
stage of education. When the pupil enters the high 
school he is already a trained being. His training, 
however, has been more or less mechanical. He is 
now at an age when his capacity, his studies, and his 
social relations admit him to a broader field — a field 
in which he makes essays at independent action ; 
when his physical development brings new problems 
and dangers ; when contact with the world begins to 
acquaint him with the vicious maxims of selfish 
men ; when there is a tendency to break away from 
the moral codes, without the wisdom of experience 
to guide him in his growing freedom. It is a critical 
period — one that tests in new ways his mental and 
moral balance. If the pupil is not wrecked here, he 
has many chances in his favor, although the college 
or business life or society may later sorely tempt 
him. That the teachings and influences of the period 
of secondary education have much to do with making 
character is recognized by the colleges. Some 
schools become known for the vigor of their intellec- 
tual and ethical training, and the successful prepara- 
tion of their pupils to meet the demands and temp- 
tations of college life. The subject of ethics in the 
high school thus becomes a proper one for inquiry. 

Shall we employ the formal study of ethics ? 
Hardly. The scientific or theoretical treatment of 
the subject belongs to the period of reflection, of 
subjective insight, and should follow psychology, if 
not philosophy. Such study hardly accomplishes 



CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT? 



105 



much practically until experience and reflection have 
given one an interest in the deepest problems of life. 
It belongs to a period when the commonplaces are 
fraught with meaning, when a rational conviction 
has the force which Socrates gave to insight into 
wisdom — when to understand virtue is to conform 
the life to it. But, nevertheless, the whole period of 
high-school work should be a contribution to the 
end of moral character. Let us get rid, at the outset, 
of the idea that a moral life is a mechanical obedi- 
ence to rules and conventionalities, a cut-and-dried 
affair, a matter that lies in but one province of our 
nature, a formalism, and learn that the whole being, 
its purposes and activities, the heroic impulses and 
the commonplace duties lie within its circle. Every- 
thing a man is and does, learns and becomes, con- 
stitutes his moral character. 

Ethics is the science of conduct — conduct on both 
its subjective and its objective side. It considers 
the relation of the self to all consequences of an act 
as foreseen and chosen by the self, and to the same 
consequences as outwardly expressed. Practically it 
teaches control of impulse with reference to results 
as expressing and revealing the character — results 
both immediate and remote. Some acts show a 
one-sided inclination, uncontrolled by regard for the 
claims of other and better impulses ; only a part 
of the individual is asserted, not the whole self in 
perfect balance. For example, the pupil plays 
truant, acting with sole regard for the impulse to 
seek ease and sensuous pleasure. He neglects other 
more important impulses, all of which might have 
been satisfied by attending faithfully to his school 
duties : the impulse of ambition, to gain power and 



I06 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

become a useful and successful citizen ; the desire 
for culture, with all its superior values ; the impulse 
of wonder, leading ever to the acquisition of knowl- 
edge ; the impulse of admiration, to seek and appre- 
ciate the beautiful ; the filial and social affections, 
which regard the feelings and wishes of the home 
and the sentiments of companions ; the impulse to 
gratitude, as shown toward parents and teachers ; 
the sentiment of reverence, as shown toward law and 
order and those who stand as their representatives. 
And all these neglected demands rise up and condemn 
him ; he is divided from himself and his fair judg- 
ment, is not his complete self. On the other hand, 
the pupil spends the day in devotion to work, he 
maintains the integrity and balance of his nature, 
gives each impulse due consideration and makes a 
symmetrical and moral advance in his development. 
In restraining the impulse to play truant, he does 
justice to all the claims of his being ; the resulting 
values as estimated in subjective experiences are the 
highest possible — the act is good. The problem, 
then, is to bring the pupil to a fuller understanding 
of the character of his impulses to action, and the 
relative value of each. In many ways the neglected 
elements of his nature may be brought into con- 
sciousness and emphasized. Everything that creates 
conceptions of ideal conduct, all concrete illustrations 
in the social life of the school, all conscious exer- 
cise of power in right ways, contribute toward his self- 
realization. The high-school pupil has not had a 
large personal experience ; hence the need, in the 
ways proposed, of teaching virtue. In the first place, 
the situation is advantageous. It is conceded by 
every school of ethical thinkers that one finds his 



CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT? joy 

moral awakening in contact with society. Society 
is the mirror in which one sees a reflection of him- 
self, and comes to realize himself and his character. 
The school of the people, which is in an important 
sense an epitome of that larger world which he is to 
enter, furnishes an admirable field for development. 
Moreover, it is a community where the restraint, 
the guidance, the ideals come of right from properly 
constituted authority. The whole problem of ob- 
jective relations and corresponding subjective values 
may find illustration and experiment in the daily 
life of the school. The constructive imagination 
may be employed to infer from experiences in school 
to larger experiences of kindred quality in the field 
of life. By judging real or supposed cases of con- 
duct the pupil makes at least a theoretical choice. 
By learning and interpreting characters and events 
in history his view is broadened. 

The whole school curriculum should contribute to 
moral development. Whatever of intellect, emotion, 
and will is exercised in a rational field expands the 
soul normally. The pursuit of studies with the right 
spirit, and with regard for the activities and relations 
incidental thereto, is moral growth. Studies awaken 
rational interest, cultivate habits of industry, are de- 
voted to the discovery of truth, reveal important 
relations of the individual to society, and present the 
purest ideals of the race. There is hardly a more 
valuable moralizer than healthy employment itself, 
employment that engages the whole man — percep- 
tion, imagination, thought, emotion, and will — em- 
ployment that looks toward ennobling and useful 
consequences, employment that has the sanction of 
every consideration that regards man's full develop- 



I08 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

ment. If the studies of the high-school course do 
not make for good, it is because they fail to get hold 
of the pupil, to awaken his interest and energies. If 
the subject matter and the instruction are adapted 
to the pupil's need, if conceptions are clearly grasped, 
if healthy interest is aroused and the attention turns 
spontaneously to the work, the pupil's growth will 
be in every way beneficent. One who regards the 
moral development of his pupils will conscientiously 
study the method of his teaching, and learn whether 
the source of neglect and rebellion lies there. 

The personality of the teacher is one of the most 
important factors in ethical training. It is ethics 
teaching by example ; it is the living embodiment of 
conduct. The ideas that find expression in the life 
of the teacher are likely to be imitated. The sym- 
pathy of the teacher with the endeavor of the pupil 
infuses life into his effort. We do not refer to a cer- 
tain kind of personal magnetism ; this may be per- 
nicious in the extreme. It may exist to the extent 
of partially hypnotizing the independent life of 
the pupil, robbing him for a time of part of his indi- 
viduality. The ideal instructor should be earnest and 
noble, impressing one with the goodness, dignity, and 
meaning of life. An easy-going regard for duties, a 
half-way attachment to labor are sure to impress 
themselves on the minds of pupils ; as readily will 
honor, sincerity, and pure ideals be reflected in their 
endeavors. You will ask : What are some of the 
specific ways in which a teacher may direct his ef- 
forts ? We often look far for the means of accom- 
plishment when they are already at hand. The 
means of moral influence are not the exclusive pos- 
session of learning or genius ; they may be used by 



CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT? 109 

every teacher, and we should have faith in what the 
schools are already doing to make good character. 
The successful use of methods depends upon the 
teacher's judgment and tact. One may do harm by 
conscientious but ill-directed effort. With Solo- 
mon we must remember that there is a time for 
everything. Amongst other impulses, natural or 
acquired, the pupil has impulses to regard honor, hon- 
esty, truthfulness, gentlemanliness, good thoughts, 
respect, gratitude, sympathy, industry, usefulness. 
In a fit of rage, with desire to harm the object of his 
vindictiveness, he may disregard nearly every one 
of the above qualities. The impulse of anger acts 
blindly, heedless of external consequences and of 
the subjective values that attach to the execution 
of every desire. All cases of bad conduct, varying in 
degree, show a similar disproportionate estimate of 
the value of motives. Our problem is to plant in the 
consciousness of the pupil an appreciation of neg- 
lected qualities. It may be noted in passing that 
there are some cases of physical tendency, amount- 
ing to monomania. Conscious wrong never is able 
fully to conceal itself, and when the truth becomes 
evident to the teacher, as it may, he should seek the 
confidence of the home, and through the home the 
influence upon the pupil of a trusted physician who 
possesses both medical skill and moral force. 

In approaching the specific ways of moral educa- 
tion, we may first make our obeisance to habit. The 
limitations as to time, place, and activity, which are 
incidental to all school life, help to form habits 
which turn the growing youth still more from the 
condition of uncontrolled liberty into one of well- 
regulated conduct, civilize him, and make him a fit 



no EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

member of society. Habits of regard for the rights 
of others further lay the foundation of altruism. 
Habit has its value. It establishes tendencies of 
conduct, although in a more or less mechanical way, 
which make easier the adherence to virtue in the 
advanced period of reflective insight. Too, these 
same duties mechanically performed may later be 
known in their full significance, and become moral 
acts. 

The judicious use of maxims, also, has a value. 
Maxims are the first formal expression of the ex- 
perience of the race as to the things to do or avoid. 
Since we act from ideas, maxims may serve prac- 
tically for many concrete cases. This is especially 
true if the full meaning of a maxim has been pre- 
sented. Next to maxims, and greater in importance, 
are the events and characters of history and biogra- 
phy. Embodied virtues and vices, real events that 
show the movements and reveal the motives of a 
people, appeal strongly to the interest. Yet, being 
remote in time and place, they allow the freest dis- 
cussion and may be made permanent types for the 
instruction and improvement of mankind. The value 
lies in the fact that qualities thus known hasten the 
self-realization of the same qualities. The life of a 
Socrates, an Aristides, of a Cato, a Savonarola, a 
Luther, a Cromwell, a Lincoln, a Whittier, of all 
men and women who exemplify virtue, heroism, self- 
denial, all struggles for the right, are the high-water 
mark for every aspiring nature. And in the teach- 
ing of history and biography it is not necessary at 
every turn to deliver a homily ; rather lead the pupil 
into the spirit and understanding of the subject — 
some things shine with their own light. 



CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT? \\\ 

A yet more fertile source of ideal conceptions is 
the choice literature of the world. From this rich 
treasury we draw the poetry which we apply to life. 
In literature truth is given life and color, idealized 
and made attractive. Qualities are abstracted, re- 
fined, perfected, and glorified. They serve to show 
us the meaning of those qualities in us. Literature 
presents emotions that in their purity and refine- 
ment seem to transcend the material world ; heroes 
and martyrs idealized and embodying self-sacrifice and 
devotion ; sentiments that touch the whole range 
of chords in the heart and awaken tenderness or 
heroism. The pupil reads Homer and gains con- 
ceptions of heroic virtues ; the '-'■ Lays of Ancient 
Rome," and gains ideas of perfect honor and devo- 
tion to country ; Tennyson, and he follows the pure 
conceptions and feels that life has taken on a nobler 
coloring ; Carlyle's doctrine of work and duty, and 
feels his moral sinews strengthened. Thoughts that 
aspire, emotions of transcendent worth, courage, 
heroism, benevolence, devotion to country or hu- 
manity — all these are at the command of the in- 
structor, if he has the skill to lead the pupil into 
the spirit and understanding of literature. If he has 
not the skill, let him not touch it. 

The study of science itself offers opportunities. 
Science searches for truth, judges not hastily, re- 
moves all prejudice, employs the judicial spirit. It 
should suggest lessons in fairness, justice, and truth 
in the field of human conduct. Hasty inference, 
prejudiced judgment are responsible for half the 
sins of this world, and the scientific spirit should be 
made to pass from the abstract field over into prac- 
tical life. 



112 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

Something can be done by daily assembly of pu- 
pils. While men have various occupations, there are 
certain interests that belong to men as men, as 
human beings. As there are hymns set to noble 
music which are sung for centuries without diminu- 
tion of interest, because they are adapted to the want 
of man's essential nature, so there are gems of 
aesthetic and ethical literature which have stood the 
test of time and are approved by common consent. 
The reading of vigorous, healthful selections can but 
have an influence sooner or later upon the listener. 
The teacher, in a brief address, may express some 
thought or experience or ideal or sentiment, that will 
reach the inner life. In no way, however, will the 
good sense and skill of the teacher be put to severer 
test than in the selection of these teachings. They 
easily become monotonous instead of giving vital 
interest. 

Professor John Dewey, in an admirable article on 
the subject of interest, defines it thus : *' Interest is 
impulse functioning with reference to an idea of self- 
expression." He further says : " The real object of 
desire is not pleasure, but self-expression. . . . 
The pleasure felt is simply the reflex of the satisfac- 
tion which the self is anticipating in its own expres- 
sion. . . . Pleasure arrives, not as the goal of an 
impulse, but as an accompaniment of the putting 
forth of activity." These expressions mean simply 
that the human being has native impulses to activity ; 
that these impulses, under rational control, aim at 
proper ends ; that pleasure is not the end of action 
but merely accompanies the putting forth of activ- 
ity ; that interest is the mental excitement that arises 
when the self-active mind has an end in view and the 



CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT? 



113 



means of its attainment — a feeling that binds the at- 
tention to the end and the means. His doctrine 
denies hedonism. We are not to aim at a good, but 
to act the good. We are not to work for the pleasure, 
but to find pleasure in working. This is a doctrine 
of vast importance to the educator. External and 
unworthy rewards for effort are false motives. The 
work itself must furnish interest, because suited to 
the activities of the pupil. The great problem of 
the teacher is to invite a self-activity that finds its 
reward in the activity. 

False motives should not be held before pupils. 
There is a view of life called romanticism, the 
condemnation of which gives Nordau his one virtue. 
The adherents claim for themselves the fill of a con- 
stantly varying round of completely satisfying emo- 
tional life. The history of prominent adherents of 
this view is a warning to this generation. The dev- 
otees either become rational and satirize their own 
folly, or become pessimists, railing at the whole that 
life has to offer, or commit suicide, and thus well rid 
the world of their useless presence. Carlyle points 
out that not all the powers of Christendom combined 
could suffice to make even one shoeblack happy. 
If he had one half the universe he would set about 
the conquest of the other half. And then follows 
the grand exhortation to useful labor, the perform- 
ance of duty, as the lasting source of satisfaction. 
If we do not find happiness therein, we may get 
along without happiness and, instead thereof, find 
blessedness. This is the doctrine of Goethe's Faust. 
Faust at first wishes to enjoy everything and do 
nothing. He runs the whole round of pleasure, of 
experience, and emotional life, and finds satisfaction 
8 



114 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



in nothing. Finally, in the second book, he finds the 
supreme moment in the joy of useful labor for his 
fellow men. It is to be noted, however, that as soon 
as he is fully satisfied he dies, as, metaphorically, 
people in that state always do. Pleasure does not 
make life worth living, but living the fulness of our 
nature is living a life of worth. 

Laying aside all theories, even the theoretical cor- 
rectness of what follows, it is necessary to hold prac- 
tically to the transcendental will. This is a large 
word, but it means simply going over beyond the 
mere solicitation of present pleasure, and holding 
with wisdom and courage to the claims of all the im- 
pulses of our being — in a word, living a life of integ- 
rity. The transcendental will can suffer and perse- 
vere and refuse pleasure, and endure and work out 
good and useful results. It is important to give pu- 
pils a little touch of the heroic, else they will be the 
sport of every wind that blows and least of all be 
able to withstand the tempest or the wintry blast. 

There is a well-worn figure of speech, essentially 
Platonic in its character, which, once well in the mind 
of a young man or woman, will surely influence the 
life for good. As the healthy tree grows and ex- 
pands in symmetry, beauty, and strength, and blos- 
soms and yields useful fruit, instead of being dwarfed 
or growing in distorted and ugly forms, so the nor- 
mal soul should expand and develop in vigor and 
beauty of character, and blossom and yield a life of 
usefulness. A stunted soul, one that has gone all 
awry, is a spectacle over which men and gods may 
weep. In some way the nobility of life, the gran- 
deur of upright character must be impressed upon 
the mind of youth. 



CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT? 



115 



And moral growth must be growth in freedom. 
Rules and maxims, petty prohibitions, and restraints 
alone will not make morality, but rather bare mech- 
anism and habit. Moral freedom means that, by an 
insight that comes of right development, one views 
the full bearing of any problem of conduct, and 
chooses with a wisdom that is his own. Morality is 
not mechanism, but insight. Doctrine does not con- 
stitute morality. Pharisaism is immorality and will 
drive any one to rebellion and sin. Mechanical rule 
has no vitalizing power. A moral life should be self- 
active, vigorous, joyous, and free. So far as spon- 
taneous conduct can be made to take the place of 
rule and restraint will you secure a growth that will 
expand, when, well-rooted by your fostering care, you 
finally leave it to struggle with the elements. 

Following in substance the thought of a promi- 
nent educator, — not so much pedagogical preaching 
as skilful stimulating, not so much perfect ideals as 
present activities, not so much compulsion as invit- 
ing self-activity are to-day the needs of the schools. 
Through guidance of present interest the child may 
later attain to the greater interests of life in their 
full comprehension. 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY* 

Touching the theme of higher education, inqui- 
ries were sent to a large number of universities, col- 
leges, and secondary schools. The first two ques- 
tions related to the work of secondary education, 
and were as follows: (i) What should the high- 
school graduate be when entering college? (2) 
What does he lack of an ideal education when he 
enters? Considering the general character of the 
questions, the answers were all that might be ex- 
pected, and they are valuable for the limit of their 
range, as well as for what they express, since they 
show that, concerning the main purpose of educa- 
tion, there is nothing new to be said. 

The following are opinions that represent the ma- 
jority or appear important as individual views : (i) 
The high-school graduate, when entering college, 
should possess a mind educated by methods that cre- 
ate interest and make power to think and generalize 
— power to do original work. (2) He should have an 
acquaintance with each field of knowledge, and should 
show a symmetrical development of his mental ac- 
tivities. (3) As tending to produce greater interest, 
knowledge, and power, he should have been trained 
in only a limited number of subjects in each field ; in 
these subjects the work should have been continuous 

* Read before the National Association of City Superintendents, 
at Jacksonville, Florida, in 1896, 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY. 



iiy 



and intensive. (4) He should have good command 
of EngHsh. (5) He should be well-grounded in right 
habits and moral principles — the practice of self- 
control. 

While this inquiry is not strictly upon the subject, 
it shows that the difficult problems of university life 
are to be solved in part by the secondary schools, 
and that some of the failures in higher education are 
due to the imperfections of earlier training. It also 
introduces part of the discussion that follows. 

The third question pertained to higher education : 
What should the college or university do for the 
high-school graduate ? Some of the more important 
opinions received may be expressed as follows : 

(a) It should supplement the failures of his earlier 
training. There should be no chasm between sec- 
ondary and higher education. 

(b) It should give him a liberal education; it 
should offer him a course that has unity and har- 
mony. It should cultivate the power of research. 
It should teach him to bring all his knowledge and 
all his power to bear on the problems of life. 

(c) It should make him broad, and then deep in 
some subject. It should start him in lines of study 
leading to his life work. 

(d) It should give him high ideals of private and 
civic conduct ; it should make a man of him. 

To consider merely the subject of college ideals 
would be trite and unprofitable, and some latitude 
will be used in the discussion. 

The influence of the college should be felt in the 
work of preparation. That the college should be 
closely articulated with the high schools is an idea of 



Il8 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

modern date, but one that now is received with grow- 
ing favor. An examination of the admission re- 
quirements of the colleges still shows a variety of 
demands, having no common basis in principles of 
education, in the standard courses of high schools, 
or in uniform agreement. The requirements of some 
colleges are imperative for specific subjects that are 
not fundamental, but merely rank with a series of 
allied subjects in a given field of knowledge. Often 
a method of work acceptable to one college would 
be rejected by another. Among reputable institu- 
tions the height of the standard varies by two 
years. 

The dissatisfaction of the high schools with these 
evils is deep-seated and wide-spread. The fault rests 
mainly with the colleges and universities, and the 
reasons that maintain unessential distinctions are ab- 
surd in the eyes of secondary-school men. If abso- 
lute uniformity in college admission is not feasible, 
a reasonable choice of equivalents within a given 
department of knowledge may be allowed. At least 
a plan of admission may be '' organized without 
uniformity J" A college has been known to refuse 
four years' excellent work in science as a substitute 
for some chapters in a particular book on physical 
geography. In another instance a certain scientific 
school, requiring two years of preparation in Latin, 
refused a four years' course in Latin in lieu of the 
prescribed number of books in Caesar. A joint com- 
mittee has recently been appointed by the Depart- 
ment of Higher Education and the Department of 
Secondary Education, of the National Educational 
Association, to consider further the basis of connec- 
tion between the high schools and the colleges. This 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY. 



119 



committee consists of eminent and able men, who 
will accomplish important results, if given proper 
encouragement and aid by the National Association, 
and if the various local associations cooperate, in- 
stead of fostering organized differences.* The re- 
port of the Committee of Ten did much to prepare the 
way for a more complete and satisfactory connection 
between the colleges and the high schools, but much 
remains to be done which may well be undertaken 
by this joint committee. It is interesting to note 
that one of the longest sections in the report of the 

* This committee made its report in 1899. The committee rec- 
ommend that any study, included in a given list regarded as suit- 
able for the secondary-school period, and pursued under approved 
conditions one year of four periods a week, be regarded as worthy to 
count toward admission to college ; they recognize that not all sec- 
ondary schools are equipped to offer all the subjects, and that the 
colleges will make their own selections for admission ; they recognize 
the principle of large liberty to the student in secondary schools, but 
do not believe in unlimited election, and they emphasize the impor- 
tance of certain constants in all secondary schools and in all require- 
ments for admission to college ; they recommend that these constants 
be recognized in the following proportion : Four units in foreign lan- 
guages (no language accepted in less than two units), two units in 
mathematics, two in English, one in history, and one in science. 

The thirteenth annual convention (1900) of the Association of 
Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland 
passed resolutions urging the establishment of a joint college-admis- 
sion examination board to bring about an agreement upon a uniform 
statement as to each subject required by two or more colleges for ad- 
mission, to hold examinations, and to issue certificates to be accepted 
by the Middle-State Colleges. 

At the Charleston meeting of the N. E. A. (1900) the following 
resolution was passed : ' ' Resolved, That the Department of Secondary 
Education and the Department of Higher Education of the National 
Educational Association commend the Report of the Special Commit- 
tee on College-Entrance Requirements, as affording a basis for the 
practical solution of the problem of college admission, and recom- 
mend the Report to the attention of the colleges of the country." 



I20 EDUCATION AND LIFE, 

Royal Commission on Secondary Education is on 
the "■ Relation of the University to Secondary Edu- 
cation," and that the importance of a close connec- 
tion is emphasized and the means of securing it is 
suggested. 

The work of secondary education must be based 
on pedagogical principles and adapted to the stage 
of development which it represents, and the colleges 
must take up the work where the high schools leave 
it. Whatever is best for a given period of growth 
is also good preparation for what follows. There 
should be no saltus in the process of general educa- 
tion. We do not mean that the colleges are not to 
help determine the preparatory courses of study ; 
but they must regard the natural order of develop- 
ment in grades below the college as well as ideal 
college standards. 

By a closer union with the high schools, the col- 
leges may help to fashion their courses, improve 
their methods, and may suggest the importance of 
placing college-educated men and women in charge 
of the various departments of high-school work. 
The report of the Royal Commission previously re- 
ferred to, discussing the preparation of teachers for 
the secondary schools, says : ^' So far as regards gen- 
eral education, they will obtain it, and, in our opin- 
ion, ought to obtain it, not in special seminaries, but 
in the same schools and universities as are resorted 
to by persons desiring to enter the other professions. 
The more attractive the profession becomes, the 
larger will be the number of teachers who will feel 
that they ought to fit themselves for it by a univer- 
sity course." The report further says : '' Whatever 
professional education is provided for teachers ought 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY. 12 1 

to have both a theoretical and a practical side. 
. . . Freedom and variety would, in our opinion, 
be best secured, if the universities were to take up 
the task ; . . . and, if the science of education 
is to make good the claims put forward in its behalf, 
it ought to be studied where other branches of men- 
tal and moral philosophy are fully handled by the 
ablest professors." 

Many colleges are doing much to increase labora- 
tory practice in the high schools, to cultivate the 
spirit of investigation, to limit the number of sub- 
jects and secure good results. In one of the new 
States, Colorado, the principle is generally recognized 
that a good preparatory education is also a good 
general education, and that every high school is, 
therefore, a preparatory school. The secondary- 
school period is maintained at four years, laborato- 
ries are provided in all the schools, and Latin and 
German, if not Greek, are found in all. These re- 
sults are largely due to the close relation in that 
State between secondary and higher education. 

In the second group of opinions quoted, the phi- 
losophy is Platonic rather than materialistic or utili- 
tarian. It makes a student a man of ideal powers, 
possibilities, and aspirations. He possesses a nature 
whose development is an end in itself, whose well- 
being is of prime consideration. Liberal education 
aims to give the student a conscious realization of 
his powers, without reference to material advan- 
tage through their use in a given occupation or 
profession. Through liberal education the student 
acquires ideas of universal interest and essential 
character. He gains a comprehensive view that 



122 EDUCATION AND LIFE, 

enables him to estimate things at their relative 
value, to learn the place, use, and end of each. 

That liberal education should remain the ideal of 
at least a large part of the college course, most edu- 
cators agree. Were this function of the college not 
a distinctive and essential one, that department of 
learning would of necessity be abandoned, and the 
direct road to practical business would be pursued. 
Recent addresses, representing three of the greatest 
American universities, agree that the function of the 
college is to be maintained, and that acquaintance 
with the several fields of knowledge is necessary to 
the very idea of liberal education. They agree to 
include the field of the languages and literature, the 
field of the sciences and mathematics, the subjective 
field, that of philosophy and psychology. In a late 
report of the Commissioner of Education appears a 
German criticism of American education, which 
mentions the lack of linguistic training. The writer 
says : " The consequences are seen in the defective 
linguistic-logical discipline of the mind, which per- 
haps more than the discipline in the mathematical 
forms of thought is a requisite of all profound intel- 
lectual progress, be that in linguistic or in mathe- 
matical and scientific branches." In the University 
of Berlin, philosophy is a required subject for all 
degrees. 

The conservation of the ideals of the race is largely 
the work of liberally educated men. Some one has 
argued that not through education, but through a 
higher standard of society and politics, will the youth 
of the land be reached; but society and politics de- 
pend upon ideal education and the church for their 
own purification. 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY. 



123 



The power of research is characteristic of modern 
university training and is essential to a liberal edu- 
cation, as giving one the mastery of his powers. 
Carlyle was not far from the right when he said that 
the true university is a library. The ability to 
use a library is one criterion of successful college 
work. Here the student gathers his own material, 
uses his own discrimination, formulates his opinions 
in the light of numerous facts and opinions, and 
gains self-reliance. It is the scientific method, as 
taught by Socrates, applied to all fields of study. 
This is the kind of work that prepares the stu- 
dent to grapple with the practical problems of the 
day. 

The opinion that some portion of the college 
work should be prescribed appears to be well founded. 
This view is strengthened by the fact that many 
high schools are weak in one or more depart- 
ments of preparation. A minimum of required work 
in leading departments of the college will tend to 
supply the deficiencies of previous training. From 
an inspection of the latest college catalogues it ap- 
pears that all colleges exercise some kind of super- 
vision over the choice of studies, and many of them 
prescribe and determine the order of more than half 
the curriculum. In choice of electives many require 
the group system, in order that consistency may be 
maintained and that a definite result in some line of 
work may be reached. 

The line of demarcation between college and uni- 
versity workis avariable, and theproblemof definitely 
locating it is perplexing in the extreme. Many be- 
lieve they see signs of segmentation at the end of 
the junior year and predict that the senior year will 



124 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



adhere to the graduate school. There are many 
evidences that somewhere along the line the period 
of general education will be shortened, and the ten- 
dency to specialize before the end of the college 
course is one proof that the change is demanded. 
Historically the college in America stands as a whole 
for liberal education, but in its later development 
the standard has been advanced and the period of 
professional education has been lengthened until the 
problem presents new phases demanding important 
readjustments. Replies recently received from many 
institutions of higher learning, touching this question, 
show a variety of opinions. One correspondent 
pithily says, " Verily, we are a smattering folk. I 
believe both the college and the professional course 
should be lengthened." President Eliot advocates 
** a three years' course for the A.B., without disguises 
or complications." Estimating the replies already 
received numerically, something more than half favor 
some kind of time readjustment, to the end that the 
period covered by the college and the professional 
school may be shortened one year. 

While defending liberal education, it may be held 
that, especially while a four years* college course is 
maintained, it should also look toward the world of 
active influence, and the filling of some vocation 
therein. The student's duties toward society must 
take on the modern aspect, as contrasted with the 
self-centred interest of the mediaeval recluse. That 
education should aim at mere serene enjoyment of 
the True, the Beautiful, and the Good is an idea of 
the past. The mere recluse to-day has no meaning 
and no use in the world. Educated men must join 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY. 



125 



the march of progress ; they must take part in the 
solution of ethical problems, in the bettering of 
government and society. The world demands of 
them altruism, public spirit, high ideals. They 
should mass the forces of the past for an onward 
movement in the present. Old knowledge should 
reach out toward new and useful applications. 

To these ends the college should provide for a 
deeper knowledge of some subject or group of re- 
lated subjects. This is an essential element of gen- 
eral education, and also has a practical aim. The 
principles of the philosophical and social sciences 
should find concrete illustration in the present. And 
above all, student life should be inspired with ideas 
of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. 

A public statement has been made that the 
seniors of a well-known university have less intel- 
lectual vigor and less moral power than the average 
man they might meet on the streets. If the charge 
be true, it is a matter for serious thought, but the 
statement should be swallowed with a large grain of 
salt. It may, however, serve as a text. The college 
must assume an amount of responsibility for the 
character of the undergraduate student. There has 
been a natural reaction against some of the unwise 
requirements of twenty-five years ago, but the reac- 
tion may have gone too far. One of our famous 
universities ten years ago adopted the policy of leav- 
ing the student to his own devices and the moral 
restraint of the policeman, but the plan was con- 
demned by the patrons of the institution, and to-day 
it exercises a wise and friendly care over the stu- 
dent's choice of studies, his attendance upon lee- 



126 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

tures, and his daily walk and conversation. Entire 
freedom in student life belongs only to the gradu- 
ate schools, and to place both undergraduate and 
graduate students under one system can but prove 
harmful. 

The ethical problems of college life are not to be 
solved wholly by perfunctory religious exercises, but 
by the spirit that pervades the whole teaching and 
student body, and by the many ways and means 
that the united efforts of earnest and devoted facul- 
ties may employ. It is a favorable circumstance that 
the student to an extent can choose subjects in ac- 
cord with his tastes ; that his powers may reach out 
toward some great intellectual interest. That the 
spirit of education is broader, more liberal, and scien- 
tific is significant ; the fact makes for truth and 
honesty. The historical method succeeds the dog- 
matic in history, social science, philosophy, and 
ethics. Men are better because they are broader and 
wiser and are coming to a higher realization of 
truth. 

No doubt the ethical life has the deepest signifi- 
cance for man. The great Fichte was right in claim- 
ing that, if this is merely a subjectively phenomenal 
world, it is a necessary creation of mind that we 
may have it wherein to work and ethically develop. 
That institution will turn out the best men where 
the Baconian philosophy is combined with the Pla- 
tonic, the scientific with the ideal. By some means 
the student should constantly come in contact with 
strong manhood and high ideals. It makes a prac- 
tical difference whether the student believes in his 
transcendent nature and possibilities or in mere ma- 
terialism and utilitarianism, whether his ethics is 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY. J27 

ideal or hedonistic, his view of Hfe optimistic or 
pessimistic. 

If the question is made distinct, What should the 
university do for the student ? — there are some ad- 
ditional considerations. 

It is enough to say of graduate courses that they 
should be a warrant for extended and thorough 
knowledge of a group of related subjects, and for 
original power to grasp and deal with difficult prob- 
lems. The candidate's knowledge and power should 
be publicly tested by a good old-fashioned examina- 
tion and defence of thesis. 

The university should refuse to admit the student 
to the professional schools until he has received at 
least the equivalent of a complete high-school edu- 
cation. The faculties of the University of Colorado 
have made an investigation of the standard of ad- 
mission to the professional schools, the length of 
professional courses, and the relation of the profes- 
sional courses to the college. The results are of in- 
terest."* Very few schools of applied science in the 
universities require four years of preparation. Only 
three or four universities require that standard for 
their law or medical schools. Most catalogues read 
after this fashion : Admission to law or medical 
school — a college diploma, or a high-school diploma, 
or a second-grade teacher's certificate, or evidence of 
fitness to pursue the subject. Less than half of the 

* During the four years (i 896-1 900) since this investigation was 
made, there has been great progress throughout the country. The 
standard universities now require at least a high-school education for 
admission to professional schools, and offer four years in medicine 
and three years in law. 



128 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

law schools require entrance qualifications, and only- 
twenty of them require a three years' course. All 
medical schools advocate a thorough scientific foun- 
dation, many of them in a very ideal way, and urge 
extensive laboratory practice in many special sub- 
jects. The most of them think the first two years 
of a medical course could well be spent without 
clinical work. Many colleges and collegiate depart- 
ments of universities provide electives that are 
accepted by some schools of theology, law, or medi- 
cine for their regular first-year work. In rare in- 
stances, studies covering two years are made common 
to the college and the professional schools. But 
only a few universities have within their own organi- 
zation a plan for shortening the period of college 
and professional study. 

The *' Report on Legal Education," 1893, issued 
by the United States Bureau of Education, says : 
" Admission to the bar in all Continental (European) 
countries is obtained through the universities which 
are professional schools for the four learned profes- 
sions — theology, medicine, law, and philosophy. In 
England and America the colleges and universities 
are chiefly schools for general culture ; only a few 
offer provision for thorough professional studies. 
While in England and America the erroneous idea 
is still predominant that a collegiate education need 
not necessarily precede professional study, in Conti- 
nental Europe it is made a conditio sine qua non. 
No one more needs than the lawyer the power of gen- 
eral education to grasp all the facts relating to a 
subject, to weigh their value, discard the unessen- 
tial, and give prominence to the determining factors ; 
no one more needs the power to avoid fallacies and 



COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY. 



129 



to argue intelligently scientific points which may be 
involved in litigation. No one more than the phy- 
sician needs an acquaintance with psychology and 
philosophy, with the various sciences and the modern 
languages ; no one more needs the power of judg- 
ment in view of seemingly contradictory facts and 
symptoms ; no one more needs the ethical qual- 
ity of the noble and honorable gentleman. Let the 
American universities maintain the standards which 
in theory they all are ready to advocate." 
9 



UNIVERSITY IDEALS* 

To an extent a university must represent the 
philosophy of a people at a given epoch, and their 
political, social, and industrial tendencies. It sym- 
bolizes the stage of civilization and spiritual insight. 
The ethical need of the time led to the study of 
philosophy in Greece ; the innate regard of the 
Roman people for justice and the problems attend- 
ing the development of the Empire emphasized the 
study of law in Rome ; Christianity and the influence 
of the Greek philosophy made theology the ideal of 
the Middle Ages ; the development of the inductive 
method places emphasis on physical science to-day ; 
the industrial spirit of America gives a practical turn 
to our higher education. It is no mere accident that 
the English university is conservative and aristocratic 
and aims at general culture, that the French faculties 
are practical, or that the German universities are 
scientific and democratic. The differences in spirit 
and method are determined by factors that belong 
to the history and character of the different 
peoples. 

* Read at the National Council of Education, Milwaukee, July 6, 
1897. This is one of three papers on " University Ideals" there 
presented, the other two representing respectively Princeton and 
Leland Stanford, Jr. The author was requested to write on " State 
University Ideals." 



UNIVERSITY IDEALS. 



131 



The colleges of New England were founded on 
the traditions of Oxford and Cambridge, and em- 
bodied their ideal and theological aims and con- 
servative method, although they naturally were more 
liberal and democratic than the parent institutions. 
The history of the early American colleges has been 
varied, but the more successful ones have certainly 
become catholic and progressive. As the country 
grew and men pushed westward, leaving tradition 
behind and developing more freely the spirit of our 
advancing civilization, the conception of a university, 
in touch with all the people, and scientific and free, 
arose. Thus we have the state university. At the 
same time the leading religious denominations have 
vied with each other in founding in the new states 
colleges or universities that are more or less denomi- 
national in spirit and aim. 

The American university of to-day contains many 
elements. Broadly speaking, it represents the ideals 
of the Platonic philosophy, the direct inheritance 
from England, the character of the German university, 
the modern scientific method, and the practical de- 
mands of American civilization. All these elements 
are woven into the web of our national life. There 
is, of course, much diversity. Each class of uni- 
versities contains something of all the ideals, but 
each emphasizes certain ones. The older and larger 
denominational school is more nearly the direct 
representative of English education, but has made 
a great advance. The state universities represent 
the people as such and the tendencies of our 
civiHzation, but in accord with the highest ideals. 
They more readily accept the influence of the 
German university. The denominational colleges 



1^2 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

scattered throughout the West aim to perpetuate 
the denominational idea. 

Almost from the foundation of our Government 
free elementary schools have been regarded as an 
essential and characteristic part of our American 
institutions. They became a logical necessity when 
our forefathers abjured the caste and intolerance of 
the Old World, and with prophetic insight proclaimed 
the era of a new civilization in which the welfare of 
the state should mean the welfare of all the people. 
While the idea of education at the expense of the 
state, and under its control, was early accepted in 
that part of the country which has gradually in- 
fluenced the whole nation, we of to-day have 
witnessed a part of the struggle to place on a per- 
manent foundation the modern system of high 
schools. These schools, especially in the West, now 
have an assured position and command the confidence 
of the people. The attempt to take the next step 
and establish state universities was met with doubt 
and opposition. At a comparatively recent date, 
however, many state universities have come into 
prominence, and to-day they appear in the main to 
be the coming institutions of university training from 
Ohio to Oregon, and from Texas to Montana. Here 
is a development that is remarkable, and we may well 
examine its significance. 

In the first place the state university is the log- 
ical outcome of our democratic ideal that made 
the public schools a necessity, an outcome which 
naturally would be first realized in the newer states. 
As America furnished new and favorable condi- 
tions for the development of civilization, freed in 



UNIVERSITY IDEALS. 133 

part from the traditions of the Old World, so the 
new states of the West became the field for a still 
more liberal growth of the tendencies of the age. 
There is a recognized tendency in our institutions 
toward a broader community of interests in respect 
to many things that affect the common welfare, and 
in no way does this tendency find a grander ex- 
pression than in the means for elevating the people 
at the expense of the people to a better citizenship, 
higher usefulness, and wiser and nobler manhood. 
The safety of the state depends upon giving the 
brightest and best of all classes and conditions an 
opportunity to rise to the surface of affairs. 

In Prussia, Switzerland, and Italy a healthy organi- 
zation of society is held to depend upon public con- 
trol of both secondary and higher education. Eng- 
land's system of education tends to maintain social 
distinctions and an intellectual conservatism that are 
harmful both to the aristocracy and to the common 
people. Education in Germany shows its superiority 
in that it reaches a larger number of the poor classes 
and develops greater freedom of thought. The 
public control of education makes it democratic and 
progressive, and strengthens its influence with the 
people. It makes the scholar a leader in the line of 
advance indicated by the ideals of the people. In 
the American state university, men come together 
as a faculty, bringing with them training and educa- 
tional ideals gained in the best universities of the 
world. They place themselves in touch with the pub- 
lic schools, the press, and all the state agencies of 
influence and control. Knowing the needs and de- 
mands of the people, they take the lead in the line 
of natural progress. The state university is insepa- 



134 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



rably linked to the state, and must carry with it the 
best influences of the state, and thus extend its 
influence to the whole people. 

The great denominational schools at first repre- 
sented homogeneous elements in the national life. 
Harvard was essentially a state institution. It was 
founded in " accord with the fundamental principles 
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." The peo- 
ple of Massachusetts, at that time, were largely 
homogeneous in race, religion, and love of freedom. 
Yale was founded partly on the conservative Con- 
gregationalism of Connecticut ; hence it represented 
the mass of people in that State. Princeton was 
founded in the interest of the Scotch and Scotch- 
Irish political and religious views in the Middle 
States, but was so far catholic as to enlist the sym- 
pathy of the Dutch and the Quakers. However, it 
served a comparatively homogeneous people. In 
later years each of these universities, in order to reach 
large numbers of people maintaining diverse views, 
has been obliged to subordinate specific sectarian or 
denominational elements and emphasize only the 
highest ideals common to its constituency. The 
newer states of the West have a mixed population 
with heterogeneous interests. Hence it follows that 
not a denominational school, but a state school, 
broad enough for all the people, alone can satisfy 
the need of each state. Since it is impossible to 
maintain a real university for each peculiar interest, 
all must unite to support one institution, an institu- 
tion maintaining the highest ideals common to hu- 
manity, and specifically to our own civilization. The 
ideals common to the American people are ample 
enough for an ideal university, founded and main- 



UNIVERSITY IDEALS. 



135 



tained by the state. Harvard or Princeton may say : 
" We have done for the state all that the state 
university claims as its function." Then let each 
state have a Princeton which from the start is as- 
sured of an adequate foundation. In our Western 
states the same reason that would create one de- 
nominational college would create in each state fif- 
teen or twenty. The history of the world never has 
seen such a dissipation of educational energy as is 
now seen in America, and a system of state educa- 
tion which tends to correct the evil merits enthusias- 
tic support. It may be added that the state uni- 
versity exists in the West because the majority of 
the people are coming to prefer that kind of institu- 
tion. 

We may say, then, that the state university repre- 
sents (i) the completion of the democratic ideal of 
public education ; (2) the unity of progress amidst 
diversity of view, and the mutual influence of the 
knowledge and power of the scholar and the ideals 
of the people ; (3) the broad platform upon which 
the heterogeneous elements of the state may unite 
in the interest of higher education. It is understood, 
of course, that these three statements are not alto- 
gether mutually exclusive. 

These views of the raison d'itre of the state uni- 
versity lead directly to the presentation in detail of 
some facts in its history and some of its aims, show- 
ing that its ideals are practicable. 

The state university virtually, if not formally, is a 
part of the public-school system. As such it holds 
a peculiar and influential relation toward the public 
high schools. It furnishes teachers trained in the 
university in regular and pedagogical courses. It 



136 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



scrutinizes the courses of study and the character of 
the work, and formally approves the schools of stand- 
ard merit. It helps in every prudent way the influ- 
ence of the school with the community. By its 
friendly relation it may present freely the advantages 
of higher education and thus reach a large number 
who would otherwise rest at the goal of high-school 
graduation. In every state, through the agency of 
the university, the number of high schools is materi- 
ally increased, and their standards, plan of organiza- 
tion, and methods are improved. Moreover, it gives 
the promise of something beyond that stimulates the 
efforts of pupils in every grade of work. 

The connection between the high school and the 
university still gives rise to troublesome problems, 
not alone in this country. The ideals of the older 
American university are often at variance with the 
systematic development of education below the 
university and the demands of the people. The 
state university has come nearer than any other to 
the solution. While Harvard and Yale met the 
growing demands of science by establishing separate 
schools, Michigan introduced the scientific course 
into the college, making it rank with the classical. 
This plan, generally adopted by the state universi- 
ties, places them nearly in line with the natural de- 
velopment of the public-school system. The state 
universities also show their regard for popular de- 
mand by admitting special students. 

By offering free tuition, the state university reaches 
many who would otherwise fail to enjoy higher 
training. It tends to equalize the conditions for 
rich and poor in the struggle for the survival of the 
fittest. 



UNIVERSITY IDEALS. 137 

The state university, as it develops and realizes 
its true function, must be thoroughly catholic in 
spirit, because it stands for humanity, truth, and 
progress. Nowhere is the professor or the scholar 
permitted to use such intellectual freedom as in the 
state university in Germany, and in the natural 
course of events the same freedom will be allowed in 
the United States. Not only will the free and in- 
ventive spirit become characteristic, but our West- 
ern universities, standing in the midst of the most 
advanced ideas of civilization, must furnish some of 
the most important contributions to the study of all 
social, economic, and ethical problems. 

In the state universities the mental and moral at- 
mosphere is healthful. A strong, honest manhood 
is cultivated. There all ideals are strongly main- 
tained, not according to a particular creed, but with 
regard to all the implications of man's higher nature. 
All influences tend to make citizens who are in 
harmony with the national spirit. An extended ac- 
quaintance with graduates of various state universi- 
ties shows that, as a whole, they are broad-minded 
citizens, loyal to the public interest. 

The relation of the religious denominations to the 
state university is one that commands serious atten- 
tion. The university says to each class of people : 
" Here is an institution which is equally for the ad- 
vantage of all — it is yours. Its platform, founded 
on ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness, is as broad 
as humanity. Since there must be diversity of re- 
ligious views, establish your theological schools, 
halls, guilds, or professorships in the vicinity of the 
university, and, making use of what the state offers, 
supplement in your own way the work of the state." 



138 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



The plan is in the highest degree economical ; it 
combines unity of effort with variety of independent 
view ; it makes the general good and the special in- 
terest mutually helpful. It is the plan of business 
common sense and of wise insight into the problems 
of the age. That the denominations — granting their 
point of view — should join their interest with that 
of the state university is shown also by the fact that 
often a given denomination finds more of its students 
there than at its church school. 

Many state universities are beginning to receive 
private endowment. Every consideration of public 
interest in each state should turn the contributions 
for education toward the one great centre of learning. 
Very few states can support more than one such 
centre. Libraries, art collections, museums, labora- 
tories, buildings, well-endowed chairs, beautiful 
grounds, should testify to the munificence of private 
wealth as well as to the benefactions of the state. 

Speaking generally, the state universities have 
large incomes and good facilities. They require high 
standards for admission and graduation. Wherever 
feasible, they maintain professional schools and 
schools of applied science. They do this upon the 
theory that the state should both regulate and pro- 
vide professional education in the interest of proper 
standards, and that, in the interest of the state and 
of the individual, such education should be made 
available to the sons of the poor. Every leading 
state university is developing a graduate school. 

In the matter of electives, the state university occu- 
pies a middle ground. Yale and Princeton represent 
the conservative side, and Harvard and Stanford the 
liberal extreme. An examination of the curricula of 



UNIVERSITY IDEALS. 



139 



ten leading state universities shows that the require- 
ments for admission are definitely prescribed, although 
two or more courses are recognized ; that about half 
the college studies are required, while the remaining 
half are offered as group or free electives. The state 
universities naturally show a tendency toward the 
German university system. 

In America the college has been frankly maintained 
in accord with Platonic ideals. A full rounded man- 
hood, drawing its power from each chief source of 
knowledge, and prepared in a general way for every 
practical activity, has been the aim. The American 
college is dear to the people, and it has done much 
to make strong men who have powerfully influenced 
the nation. There are, however, various tendencies 
which are likely to modify the whole organization of 
the American university, including that of the college. 

The recent tendency toward free election, reaching 
even into the high school, is a subject of animated 
controversy. This tendency I have frequently dis- 
cussed elsewhere, and must still maintain that, in its 
extreme form, it is irrational. One university of high 
standing makes it possible to enter its academic de- 
partment and graduate without mathematics, science, 
or classics. This is an extreme that is not likely to 
be sanctioned by the educational world. If there is 
a human type with characteristics by which it is de- 
fined — characteristics which can be developed only 
by looking toward each field of knowledge — then a 
secondary and higher education which makes possi- 
ble the entire omission of any important group of 
subjects is likely to prove a great wrong to the aver- 
age student. According to some high educational 



140 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



authorities, no one can be called liberally educated 
who does not at least possess knowledge of (i) mathe- 
matics and science, (2) language and literature, (3) 
philosophy. Philosophy, as it was in Greece and as 
it is in Germany, may become a larger factor in our 
American education. 

There is another tendency which is working toward 
an inevitable result. The average American student 
who desires higher or professional education will not 
spend four years in high school, four years in college, 
and three or four years in a graduate or professional 
school. There is a movement to shorten in some 
manner the whole course of education. Already 
many colleges and collegiate departments of univer- 
sities offer electives that will count for one or two 
years of law, medicine, or theology. Already the 
university system in the form of group electives is 
introduced into the last two years of college. 

The outcome will probably be a gradual reorgan- 
ization of the high-school studies and those of the 
first two or three years of college. The new curricu- 
lum should lay for the student a broad and firm 
foundation in knowledge and power for all subsequent 
aptitudes. Upon this should be built the graduate 
school, the professional school, and perhaps the school 
of technology. In this plan the American college 
need not be lost, for the bachelor's degree could be 
granted for a given amount of work beyond the col- 
lege in the graduate school. The claim that the 
student should begin university work almost any- 
where along the line of education, before laying a 
complete foundation for a specialty, appears absurd. 
It may be added that only by partial reorganization 
of our educational system can the admission standard 



UNIVERSITY IDEALS. 



141 



to the American professional school ever be made 
respectable. 

The scientific spirit — the term is used in the broadest 
sense — in all investigation and instruction is a most 
encouraging feature of present tendencies. If the 
American professor cannot always be an original in- 
vestigator, he may keep abreast of investigation and 
impart its inspiration to the student. To this end 
the Lehrfreiheit, freedom in teaching, is necessary. 
It is a sad comment that the spirit of the inquisition 
has recently appeared in a New England university. 
The professor's thought must not be prescribed for 
him by any creed, religious, political, or scientific. Of 
course, he must stand on the safe foundation of 
the past — he is not expected to soar in a balloon or 
leap over a precipice. A recent work on " The Ideal 
of Universities " says : " We can distinguish four chief 
currents in the theology of the present era: (i) The 
Roman Catholic ; (2) the Protestant ; (3) that objec- 
tive-historic theology which simply states the origin 
and development of the Christian doctrine ; and (4) 
the inception of a theology based upon recognized 
facts of science, of human nature, and of history." 
All philosophy of nature and of human nature must 
become truth-seeking — this is a mere truism. No 
philosophy or belief can afford to maintain any other 
attitude. Leaders in the orthodox churches are 
teaching us this fact by their bearing toward new 
conceptions. And we need have no fear of the out- 
come. The highest ideals and hopes of humanity 
will be confirmed by the most thorough investigation 
in which metaphysics shall use the contribution of 
every department of objective and subjective science. 
A course in theology, scientific theology, should be 



1^2 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

found in every university, including the state univer- 
sity — and some dare to think the latter is the place 
for it. The facts of man's higher intellectual and 
emotional life are the most important data for inves- 
tigation. 

The doctrine of LerjifreiJieit^ the freedom of the 
student, unhappily has been ignorantly applied in 
this country. It may properly be employed for the 
German university student at the age of twenty 
to twenty-five, after his training in the gymnasium, 
but not to the American college student at the age 
of eighteen to twenty-two. In America it may ap- 
ply to the students in the graduate school. Some 
American colleges have tried the extreme theory of 
mental and moral freedom for the college student, 
and have learned from an unsatisfactory experience 
the lesson of a wise conservatism. 

The old struggle between science and the humani- 
ties still goes on. We must adopt a view of education 
which regards the nature of man and its adapta- 
tion to the whole environment, including its histori- 
cal element. In a keen analysis of the nature of 
tilings we shall not find Greek and Latin, but we 
shall find them historically in our language and 
literature, and in the generic concepts of our civili- 
zation. Hence they are a necessary part of any 
extended study of language, literature, or art. 

We do not believe that the practical tendency of 
American education will destroy our reverence for 
what the Germans call the philosophical faculty in 
the university. The liberal arts, including pure sci- 
ence, are the gems of human culture, and are given 
a high value even in the imagination of the ignorant. 
The editor of '' The Cosmopolitan " draws a bold and 



UNIVERSITY IDEALS. 



H3 



somewhat original outline for modern education, and 
it is in many ways suggestive. But the author over- 
looks what every true scholar knows, that thorough 
scientific knowledge of principles must remain the 
fundamental work of education and the substantial 
ground of progress in civilization. A university 
course may not consist chiefly of lectures upon pru- 
dential maxims, such as all must learn partly from 
experience. Such a theory would award the palm, 
not to Socrates, but to the Sophists. The truth in 
all the clamor for practical work in the college is 
that the culture studies must be vivified by closer 
relation to the real world and to modern life. 

Little has been said of what is called the graduate 
school. Germany credits us with eleven institutions 
that have either reached the standard of a genuine 
university or are rapidly approaching it. Of these 
eleven, five are state universities. This estimate, of 
course, is made in accord with the plan and standard 
of the German university. It appears certain that in 
time the name university in America will be applied 
only to those institutions which maintain the graduate 
school and raise the dignity of the professional 
schools. The university system will develop freely 
in this country only after a somewhat important re- 
organization of our higher education. The line 
must be drawn more sharply between foundation 
education and university work, the whole period 
of education must be somewhat shortened, and, in 
most of our universities, the graduate faculty must 
be strengthened. That these changes will be wrought, 
and that we shall have a rapid development of the 
genuine university is certain. Much is to be ex- 
pected from our higher scholarship in many lines of 



144 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



investigation. In America, men are solving prob- 
lems the existence of which has only been dimly- 
conceived by the masses of people in the Old World. 
Inspired by our advanced conceptions of government 
and society, and by the free, inventive, truth-seeking 
spirit characteristic of our people, the American 
scholar will make leading contributions to the world's 
literature of sociology, politics, and science. And 
when the spirit of reality, now superficial, gains a 
deeper insight into the nature of things, America 
may yet lead the world in those investigations which 
belong to the sphere of philosophy. 



GENERAL EDUCATION PRACTICAL. 

'-The possibilities of education depend upon inborn 
capacities, but the unfolding of them is education. 
A man of large capacity, born among savages, remains 
a savage, an Arab is a, Mohammedan, an Englishman 
is a Christian, a child among thieves is a thief, a 
child in a home of culture imbibes refinement and 
truth. Tennyson, in the interior of Africa, would 
not have developed his exquisite rhyme and rhythm, 
metaphor and verse, and polish and sparkle of ex- 
pression, would not have conceived thoughts that 
penetrate the earth and the nature of man, and 
shoot upward to the quivering stars ; he would have 
mused under his palm tree, and have fed, perhaps 
somewhat daintily, upon unlucky missionaries. An 
African of natural ability in the homes of Massa- 
chusetts, under the influence of Harvard, would be- 
come a man of vigorous thought and fine feeling, 
possibly of genius. / 

Since education is so potent, what shall the nature 
of it be ? ^ Shall knowledge of mountain and forest 
and the seasons, and the common sense that grows 
from experience, and the practical power to read and 
compute be sufficient ? If all minds were equal, if 
the stores of wisdom were valueless, if special inves- 
tigators found nothing worth revealing, if thoughts 
of master minds did not inspire, if men, like brutes, 
were governed by instincts and had no possibilities 



146 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



beyond a certain physical skill, the education of 
nature might suffice. 

This is a practical age, and no picture too bright 
:an be drawn of the advantages of a high material 
(civilization for bettering the condition of all classes 
of men. The necessity of being an active factor in 
the world of usefulness cannot be too strongly urged. 
But our material progress is dependent upon soul 
activity. This activity is nourished by general 
education. Soul activity finds expression in a 
thousand practical ways. We educate highly that 
the man may have more power, that he may have 
many resources, that he may do better what he has 
to do, and may not be dependent on one means of 
support or one set of conditions. It is not so much 
labor with the hands as intelligent directive power 
which is needed, and this power is largely derived 
from general education. Intelligent men are intel- 
ligent laborers. An educated man will learn more 
quickly, work more successfully, and attain a higher 
standard than the ignorant artisan. Theory teaches 
and practice proves that in business and manual pur- 
suits educated men bring an intelligence to their 
work and accomplish results impossible for the igno- 
rant man ; that, as a class, they average high in all 
practical activities. There should be no haste to 
enter a trade. Life is long enough to accomplish all 
that may be done, and all the preparation made for 
its duties is a wise economy. It is hardly necessary 
here to state the inference that general education is 
practical education. 

The demand for less of general education before 
the special is prominent. This demand does not 
necessarily imply that its authors beheve there is too 



GENERAL EDUCATION PRACTICAL. 



147 



much preparation for life work ; indeed, few of them 
would wish that preparation to be less ; they would 
simply change the ratio between general and special 
training. We believe that a critical examination of 
rational courses of study in the schools would show 
that little of the work could well be omitted ; that 
nearly all contributes toward the end of a well- 
rounded education, indeed is necessary to that end ; 
and that the training of faculty is only well begun at 
the end of the high-school course. Even the study 
of the classics, besides other incidental advantages, 
trains the critical powers, refines the taste, and is in 
an important sense a subjective study. The infer- 
ence is that, with less of general education, the forces 
of one's being would not be properly trained and 
marshalled for active service in life. 

If we define practical education as that which is j 
capable of being turned to use or account, a high I 
degree of general education before the special is/ 
eminently practical, inasmuch as it broadens and' 
heightens a man's possibilities. Moreover, it is of 
service to all that even a few should be educated 
ideally. Such education places ideals before , men 
which tend to elevate them. We cannot easily 
estimate the value to the world of a genius, one of 
those men who stand on nature's heights and see ^ 
with clear vision, and proclaim the glories of their | 
view to listening men, who picture at least feebly the I 
things described. They are the heralds of new 
events, the inspirers of progress. A highly educated 
man, though not a genius, in a way may occupy a 
similar place, and may repay by his influence, many 
times, in practical ways, the expense of his education. 
Societies of laborers are already beginning to ascribe 



148 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

their troubles in part to lack of education, and are 
looking to education as a means of improving their 
condition. General education is practical education. 
While every boy should be taught to earn a liv- 
ing, this should not be done needlessly at the ex- 
pense of the higher development of the faculties. 
Too much attention to the practical dwarfs the 
powers, limits the horizon, and will result in the de- 
struction of that spirit which makes a strong national 
character. There is little need to urge the practical ; 
the more immediate and obvious motives constantly 
draw men toward it. The refinements of the soul 
are at first less inviting ; they are hard to gain and 
easy to lose. Carlyle says : " By our skill in Mechan- 
ism, it has come to pass that, in the management of 
external things, we excel all other ages, while in 
whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true 
dignity of soul and character, we are, perhaps, in- 
ferior to most civilized ages. . . . The infinite, 
absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, 
conditioned one ; it is no longer a worship of the 
Beautiful and Good, but a calculation of the profit- 
able. . . . Our true deity is Mechanism. It has 
subdued external nature for us, and we think it 
will do all other things." Carlyle possessed a true 
insight when he penned these words. Popular de- 
mands tend to make the age more unpoetic than it 
is. In this age the tourney has been converted into 
a fair; the vision of the poet is obscured by the 
smoke of factories ; Apollo no longer leads the 
Immortal Nine upon Parnassus ; and we would 
dethrone the gods from Olympus. 

Men and peoples have made permanent contribu- 



GENERAL EDUCATION PRACTICAL. 



149 



tions to the world's progress, not by military achieve- 
ment or accumulation of wealth, but by the some- 
thing better called culture. The glory of the Greeks 
lay not in their civil wars, but in the spirit brought 
to the defence of their country at Thermopylae ; not 
in the cost and use of their temples and statuary, 
but in the art that found expression in them ; not 
in their commerce, but in the lofty views of their phil- 
osophers and the skill of their poets. Men admire 
that which ennobles, without thought of price or util- 
ity, and the world still demands liberal education. 
Literature and philosophy have much more in them 
for the average student than has yet been gained 
from them. The aesthetic side of literature is too 
often condemned or neglected. There is genuine 
education in all aesthetic power, even in the lower 
form of appreciation of the ludicrous, the power to 
observe fine distinctions of incongruity. We say a 
thing is perfectly ludicrous, perfectly grotesque, and 
thereby recognize the art idea, namely, perfection in 
execution. Man is always striving to attain the per- 
fect in some form, and the art idea is one of the 
highest in the field of education. Art leans toward 
the side of feeling, but is none the less rich and 
valuable for that. Shakespeare furnishes some of 
the highest types of art in literature. The flow of 
his verse, the light beauty of his sonnets, the bold- 
ness and wonderful aptness of his metaphors, the 
skill of his development, the ever-varying types, the 
humor, the joys, the sorrows, the wisdom, the folly 
of men, the condensation of events and traits and 
experiences in individual types, the philosophical 
and prophetic insight, the artistic whole of his plays, 
constitute a rich field of education. 



ISO 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



The Gothic cathedral, with its pointed arch, its 
mulUoncd window, tapering spire, and upward-run- 
ning Hnes, indicating the hope and aspiration of the 
middle ages, with its cruciform shape, typical of the 
faith of the Christian, is more than the stone and 
mortar of which it is constructed. The truly edu- 
cated man in art perceives the adaptation, polish, 
and perfection in literature ; discovers the grace, the 
just proportions, the ideal form and typical idea in 
sculpture ; views the expression, grouping, sentiment, 
coloring, and human passion in painting ; enjoys the 
harmonies, movements, and ideas in music, that com- 
bination of effects that makes subtile and evasive 
metaphors ; discovers the conventionalized forms and 
mute symbols, the " frozen music " of architecture ; 
finds grandeur in the mountains, glory in the sunset, 
metaphors of thought in every form of nature ; 
laughs with the morning breeze, finds strength in the 
giant oak, and sorrow in the drooping willow. 

We need the ideal. Let us not permit the mortal 
body to lord it too much over the immortal spirit. 
The ideal man is the purpose of education and the 
aim of existence, or life is not worth living. All 
material prosperity is naught except as contributing 
to that end. Sympathetic spirits are calling for more 
enlightenment and enjoyment, and leisure for the 
laboring classes. They believe that men should be 
men as well as machines, and that, if they are edu- 
cated ideally, the practical will take care of itself. 
If we retain our belief in the high possibilities of the 
human soul, we shall have faith in ideal education, 
and shall confidently offer every opportunity for the 
highest development possible of the child's power 
for knowledge, enjoyment, and action. And let his 



GENERAL EDUCATION PRACTICAL, 



151 



development be full and rounded. Let the roar of 
ocean and the sough of the pines make music for his 
ears as well as the whir of factories ; let the starry- 
heavens speak to his soul as vividly as the electric 
lamp to his eye. Let us evolve from the material 
present ideals that shall stand in place of the 
vanished ones. 



ELEMENTS OF AN IDEAL 

LIFE. 



ELEMENTS OF AN IDEAL 

LIFE. 

THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK. 

A GENTLEMAN who had resided some years in 
Central and South America, conversing one evening 
with friends upon a doctrine of happiness, illus- 
trated his argument with an anecdote. A Yankee 
living in South America observed that the native 
bees had no care for the morrow. He thought to 
make a fortune by bringing hard-working honey 
bees from the North to this land of perennial flowers, 
where they could store up honey the year around, 
and he tried the experiment. The bees worked 
eagerly for a time, but soon discovered that there 
was no winter in this paradise, and they perched on 
the flowers and trees and dozed the livelong day. 
Our philosopher assumed that the indolent, improv- 
ident life of the ignorant natives of sunny climes is 
the one of real happiness, and that a life of great 
activity is not to be desired. If his theory holds, 
then the savage under his palm tree is happier than 
the civilized man of the temperate zone, the mon- 
key in the tropical jungle is better off than the sav- 
age, and the clam is happiest of all. 

An observant traveller, returning by the southern 
route from California, studies Indians of various 
tribes at successive stages of the journey. Near 



156 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



the Mohave desert he sees abject beings loafing 
about the railway station to beg from the curious 
passengers ; further east he sees self-respecting red 
people offering for sale pottery or blankets — their 
own handiwork ; later he notes members of another 
tribe working on railroad construction by the side 
of white laborers ; as he approaches the settled 
region he observes yet others who have homes and 
farms and engage in civilized industry, and his 
thought runs along the ascending scale of being 
until he contemplates the highest energy of the most 
cultured and forceful minds of our best civilization. 
He instinctively decides that the desirable life is on 
the upper scale of intelligence, feeling, and action. 

Happiness through work is the creed of the dawn- 
ing century. The romance of chivalry gives place 
to the poetry of steam ; democracy is teaching 
wealth and position the dignity of labor ; evolution 
and psychology show action to be the consummate 
flower of thought and feeling ; recent literature 
illustrates the gospel of effort ; and religion reaffirms 
the doctrine that faith without works is dead. 

Herbert Spencer's philosophy defines life to be 
" the continuous adjustment of internal relations to 
external relations." This adjustment implies self- 
activity. If man has been evolved through a long 
period of change, he is a survival of the fittest in 
the struggle for existence. His ancestral history is 
one of exertion, his powers have been developed by 
use, he maintains himself by striving, his normal 
state is in the field of labor, and logically it is there 
his welfare and happiness are found. 

Max Nordau wrote a book on ' * Degeneration. ' ' It 
contains much interesting matter, many wholesome 



THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK. 



157 



suggestions, and considerable false theory. He 
claims that the demands of modern civilization place 
men under too great a strain, that the human race 
is tending toward insanity, and that by and by we 
shall stop our daily newspapers, remove the tele- 
phones from our homes, and return to a life of 
greater simplicity. It is true that tension never 
relaxed loses its spring, and worry kills, but the most 
potent causes of degeneration are false pleasures and 
lack of healthful work. Evolution's most important 
ethical maxim is that deadheads in society degenerate 
as do parasites in the lower animal kingdom. Every 
idler violates a great law of his being, which demands 
that thought and feeling shall emerge in action. 
Every class of people has its idlers, men who desire 
to possess without earning. The aimless son of 
wealth and the tramp tread the same path. Uni- 
versal interest in honest, healthful employment 
would cure nearly all the evils of society and state. 
Manual labor is the first moral lesson for the street 
Arab and the criminal, and the best cure for some 
species of insanity. True charity does not give 
when it can provide the chance to earn. Idlers, 
lacking the normal source of happiness, seek harm- 
ful pleasures, and learn sooner or later that for every 
silver joy they must pay in golden sorrow. False 
stimuli, false excitement, purposeless activities, take 
the place of vocation. Tramps are not the only 
vagabonds ; there are mental and moral vagabonds 
whom a fixed purpose, a definite interest and prin- 
ciples of conduct would turn from degeneration to 
regeneration. Balzac, with his keen analysis, de- 
scribes the career of a graceless spendthrift who, 
finally weary of himself, one day resolved to give 



J eg EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

himself some reason for living. Under good influ- 
ences he took up a life of regularity, simplicity, and 
usefulness, and learned that men's happiness and 
saneness of mind are proportionate to their labors. 
This is the great lesson of Goethe's " Faust," set in 
imperishable drama for the instruction of the ages. 
Balzac's Cur^ of Montegnac speaks to a repentant 
criminal: "There is no sin beyond redemption 
through the good works of repentance. For you, 
work must be prayer. The monasteries wept, but 
acted too ; they prayed, but they civilized. Be 
yourself a monastery here." Repentance, prayer, 
work — these are the way of salvation. 

Every man of broad mind has full regard for the 
problems of labor and has faith in a progress that 
shall mean better conditions for the less fortunate, 
but Edwin Markham's " Man With the Hoe," as 
applied, not to special and extreme conditions of 
hardship, but in general to the problems of the 
human race, is wrong at the foundation ; it is 
neither correct science, good philosophy, nor accu- 
rate history. It is the doctrine of the fall of man 
rather than of the ascent of man ; it is the doctrine 
that labor is a curse. Without the hoe the human 
race would be chimpanzees, savages, tramps and 
criminals. In human development no useful labor 
ever " loosened and let down the brutal jaw" or 
" slanted back the brow" or " blew out the light 
within the brain" or deprived man of his birth- 
right. At a stage of his progress, by cultivating 
the soil man of necessity cultivates his soul. The 
hoe has been an indispensable instrument to the 
growth of intelligence and morals, has been the 
great civilizer — a means of advance toward Plato 



THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK. 



159 



and the divine image. Hardship may arrest devel- 
opment, but seldom causes degeneration. Our 
problem is not to free from bondage to work, but 
to relieve of burdens that are too heavy, and place 
a larger part on the shoulders of the strong and 
selfish. 

Our educational philosophy at times wanders in 
dangerous bypaths, but there is a recent return to 
the plain highway. Some late notable utterances 
maintain that character must be formed by struggle, 
that a good impulse must prove its quality by a 
good act, that education is self-effort, and that pas- 
sive reception of knowledge and rules of conduct 
may make mental and moral paupers. Here is an 
apt thrust from a trenchant pen : '' Soft pedagogics 
have taken the place of the old steep and rocky 
path to learning. But from this lukewarm air the 
bracing oxygen of effort is left out. It is nonsense 
to suppose that every step in education can be in- 
teresting. The fighting impulse must often be 
appealed to." 

I like to discover philosophy in the literature of 
the day, literature which does not rank as scientific, 
but contains half-conscious, incidental expression of 
deep perceptions of human nature. Kipling at his 
best sounds great moral depths, and teaches the 
lesson of life's discipline. He has a plain message 
for America as she takes her new place in the con- 
gress of the world. Civilized nations must take np-j/C 
the burden of aiding less favored peoples, not for 
glory or gain, but as an uncompromising duty 
without hope of appreciation or reward. We must 
expect the untaught races will weigh our God, our 
religion, and us by our every word and act in rela- 



l6o EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

tion to them. We, as a nation, may no longer wear 
the lightly proffered laurel, but must expect the 
older, civilized nations will judge us by our wisdom, 
equity, and success in discharge of our new respon- 
sibilities. In Kipling's " McAndrew's Hymn " 
many years of hardship, sternly borne in obedience 
to duty, atone for misspent days under the influence 
of the soft stars in the velvet skies of the Orient. 
In ** The 'Eathen " the author refers to the native 
inhabitants of India, whose most familiar household 
words are ** not now," " to-morrow," ** wait a 
bit," and whose chief traits are dirtiness, laziness, 
and " doin' things rather-more-or-less." He de- 
scribes the raw English recruit, picked out of the 
gutter, recounts the stages of discipline that make 
him a good soldier, and finally a reliable non-com- 
missioned ofHcer — a man that, returned to his coun- 
try, would prove a good and useful citizen. 

" The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood 'an stone • 
'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own ; 
'E keeps 'is side arms awful : 'e leaves 'em all about, 
An' then comes up the regiment an* pokes the 'eathen out. 

The 'eathen in 'is blindness must end where 'e began, 

But the backbone of the Army is the non-commissioned man." 

"L' Envoi" of "The Seven Seas" suggests the 
creed of a healthy soul : to accept true criticism ; 
to find joy in work ; to be honest in the search for 
truth ; to believe that all our labor is under God, the 
Source of all knowledge and all good. 

Robert Louis Stevenson is great as a novelist ; 
he is greater in his brief writings and his letters. 
He presents some plain truths with attractive vigor. 
He says : " To have suffered, nay, to suffer, sets a 



THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK. i6l 

keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This 
is a great truth, and has to be learned in the fire. 
In almost all circumstances the human soul 
can play a fair part. . . . To me morals, the 
conscience, the affections, and the passions are, I 
will own frankly and sweepingly, so infinitely more 
important than the other parts of life, that I con- 
ceive men rather triflers who become immersed in 
the latter. To me the medicine bottles on my 
chimney and the blood in my handkerchief are acci- 
dents ; they do not color my view of life. . . . 
We are not put here to enjoy ourselves ; it was not 
God's purpose ; and I am prepared to argue it is 
not our sincere wish. . . . Men do not want, 
and I do not think they would accept, happiness ; 
what they live for is rivalry, effort, success. Gor- 
don was happy in Khartoum, in his worst hours of 
danger and fatigue." 

A cartoon of Gladstone, appearing soon after he 
had ostensibly retired from public life, showed him, 
with eager look and keen eye, writing vigorous es- 
says upon current political questions. It recalled 
the grandeur of a life filled with great interests, sane 
purposes, and perpetual action. Biography is the 
best source of practical ideals ; it is philosophy 
teaching by example ; the personal element gives 
force to abstract truths. Luther's Titanic power 
and courage under the inspiration of a faith that 
could remove mountains has nerved the purpose of 
millions of men in great crises. 

Were I to seek an epic for its power to influence, 
I would go to real history and choose the life of 
William the Silent. For thirty years this Prince of 

ir 



1 62 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

Orange stood for civil and religious liberty in the 
Netherlands, in an age when men little understood 
the meaning of liberty. He sacrificed wealth and 
honors for his country. In spite of reverses, of the 
cowardice and disloyalty of his followers, of igno- 
rance of the very motives of his action, he perse- 
vered. Throughout the long struggle he was hope- 
ful, cheerful, and courageous. When the celebrated 
ban appeared, barring him from food, water, fire, 
shelter, and human companionship, setting a price 
on his head, in reply he painted in vivid colors a 
terrible picture of the oppressors of his people and 
held it up to the view of the civilized world. The 
motives which sustained him were faith in God, a 
strong sense of duty, and a deep feeling of patriot- 
ism. His biographer says : " As long as he lived 
he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, 
and when he died the little children cried in the 
streets." 

Heine, the poet and philosopher, was dying in 
an obscure attic in Paris. He was wasted to a skel- 
eton and was enduring the extremity of human 
suffering. He could see only dimly, as through a 
screen. As he himself said, there was nothing 
left of him except his voice. Under these almost 
impossible conditions, he was still laboriously writ- 
ing, that he might leave a competence to his wife. 
A friend of his earlier days visited him, and through 
a long conversation his words sparkled with wit, 
humor, poetry, and philosophy. Surely the active 
spirit is more than the body ! There was a feudal 
knight who went about saying to all despondent 
wayfarers, ** Courage, friend ; the devil is dead !" 
and he always spoke with such cheerful confidence 



THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK. 



163 



that his listeners accepted the announcement as good 
news, and gained fresh hope. 

In this Philosophy of Work is there no place for 
romance ? Shall there be no thrilling adventure, 
nothing but dull duty and drudgery ? Shall we 
have only dead monotony — no color, light, or 
shadow ? Shall Carlyle's " splendors high as 
Heaven" and "terrors deep as Hell" no longer 
give a zest to life ? Stevenson's " Lantern Bear- 
ers " has an answer for this natural and ever recur- 
rent question. In a little village in England, along 
the sands by the sea, some schoolboys were accus- 
tomed to spend their autumn holidays. At the end 
of the season, when the September nights were 
black, the boys would purchase tin bull's-eye lan- 
terns. These they wore buckled to their waists and 
concealed under topcoats. In the cold and dark- 
ness of the night, in the wind and under the rain, 
they would gather in a hollow of the lonely sand 
drifts, and, disclosing their lanterns, .would engage 
in inconsequential talk. In his words : " The 
essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the 
black night ; the slide shut, the topcoat buttoned ; 
not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your foot- 
steps or to make your glory public : a mere pillar of 
darkness in the dark ; and all the while, deep down 
in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know that 
you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and 
sing over the knowledge. . . . Justice is not 
done to the versatility and the unplumbed childish- 
ness of man's imagination. His life from without 
may seem but a rude mound of mud ; there will be 
some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he 



164 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



dwells delighted ; and for as dark as his pathway- 
seems to the observer, he will have some kind of a 
bull's-eye at his belt. . . . The ground of a 
man's joy is often hard to hit. The observer (poor 
soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. For to 
look at the man is but to court deception. We 
shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourish- 
ment ; but he himself is above and abroad in the 
green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds 
and nested in by nightingales. And the true realism 
were that of the poets, to climb up after him like 
a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven 
for which he lives. And the true realism, always 
and everywhere, is that of the poets : to find out 
where joy resides and give it a voice far beyond 
singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the 
joy of the actors lies the sense of any action, that 
is the explanation, that the excuse. To one who 
has not the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon 
the links is meaningless. And hence the haunting 
and truly spectral unreality of realistic books." 
This quotation needs no excuse. The mould of 
human nature from which this copy was taken is 
forever broken, and can never be reproduced. 

To be a lantern-bearer on the lonely heath, to 
rejoice in work and struggle — this is the romance, 
real, attainable, and apt for the world as it is and 
for the work we must do. If irrational pastime, 
attended with endurance, may be a joy, surely 
rational effort toward some desired result may have 
its poetry. Sacrifice and heroism are found in 
humble homes ; commonplace labor has its dangers 
and its victories ; and many a man at his work, in 
knowledge of the lifiht concealed, the interest he 



THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK. 165 

makes of his vocation, his romance, exults and 
sings. 

The world is as we regard it. Many look at the 
world as Doctor Holmes' squint-brained member 
of the tea-table views the plant kingdom. He 
makes the underground, downward-probing life of 
the tree the real life. The spreading roots are a 
great octopus, searching beneath instinctively for 
food, while the branches and leaves are mere termi- 
nal appendages swaying in the air. It is a horrible 
conception, and we are pained at standing on our 
heads. The tree roots itself to the earth and draws 
its nourishment therefrom that it may spring heav- 
enward, and bear rich fruit and be a thing of beauty, 
a lesson and a promise. Man is rooted to the earth, 
but his real life springs into the free air and bathes 
in the glad sunlight. 

The purpose of our labor determines its qualities 
of truth and healthfulness. Satisfaction must be 
sought by employing our faculties in the useful arts 
and in the search for truth. Perfection of self is 
the ultimate good for each individual, but this is 
attained, not in isolation, but in social life with its 
mutual obligations. The lesson of civil and relig- 
ious liberty, taught by the great reformers, has been 
only partly learned. Individualism, rightly under- 
stood, is the true political doctrine, but the selfish- 
ness of individual freedom is the first quality to de- 
velop. Concerning great public questions often the 
attitude is as expressed in Balzac's words : " What 
is that to me ? Each for himself ! Let each man 
mind his own business !" Democracy is the way 
of social and political progress, but we have not yet 



1 66 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

reached the height of clear vision. We are strug- 
gling up the difficult and dangerous path, looking 
hopefully upward, thinking we see the summit, only 
to find at each stage that the ultimate heights are 
still beyond. When kings are dethroned, the hope 
of democracy is to enthrone public conscience. 
Here is a picture of a condition occasionally possible 
in any state of America to-day. We will say there 
is some great public interest, not a party problem, 
involving the financial prosperity and the essential 
welfare of the state, and affecting its credit, honor, 
and reputation abroad. And — with some noble 
exceptions — perhaps not a minister in his pulpit, 
not an orator on his platform, not a newspaper with 
its great opportunity for enlightening the people 
and exerting influence, not an educator, not a col- 
lege graduate, not a high-school graduate, not a 
business man, not a politician arises and says : Here 
is a common good imperilled, and I for one will give 
of my time, my energy, and, if need be, according 
to my ability, of my money in its support. So 
long as such a state of apathy concerning public 
questions may exist, there is something still to be 
desired for the ideals of democracy and for our 
methods of education. 

The Platonic philosophy has largely inspired edu- 
cational work, and must still furnish its best ideals. 
But emphasizing the worth of the individual to him- 
self has created a false conception of social obli- 
gation. Culture for culture's sake has been the 
maxim, but I have come to believe that a culture 
which does not in some way reach out to benefit 
otliers is not of much value to the individual him- 
self. Some one has aptly illustrated this view : 



THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK, 167 

probably the drone in the bee-hive, when he is about 
to be destroyed, would say, " I would like to live 
for life's sake, and would like to buzz a while longer 
for buzz's sake." 

I would see young men and women go out into 
the world with a true democratic spirit, with a ready 
sympathy for all classes of people, and with a help- 
ful attitude toward all problems of state and society. 
The work of any public institution of higher learning 
is a failure in so far as its graduates fail to honor 
the state's claim on them as citizens. The great 
principle of evolution is the struggle for life ; there 
is another equally important principle, namely, the 
struggle for the life of others. Altruism, dimly dis- 
closed away down on the scale of being, finally 
shines forth in the family and home in all of those 
social sentiments that make human character beau- 
tiful and noble. Society is the mirror in which each 
one sees himself reflected, by which each attains 
self-consciousness, and becomes a human being. 
From cooperation spring industries, commerce, 
science, literature, art — all that makes life worth 
living. If the individual owes everything to soci- 
ety, he should be willing in some small ways to 
repay part of the debt. 

The great BismaVck, that man of iron and blood, 
not given to sentimentality, in fireside conversation 
repeatedly proclaimed that during his long and ar- 
duous struggle for the unification of Germany he 
was sustained by a sense of duty and faith in God. 
" If I did not believe in a Divine Providence which 
has ordained this German nation to something good 
and great, I would at once give up my trade as a 



1 58 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

statesman. If I had not the wonderful basis of 
religion, I should have turned my back to the whole 
court." Some one has said that the essence of 
pessimism is disbelief in God and man. Fear is a 
kind of atheism. Heine once said : ** God was 
always the beginning and end of my thought. When 
I hear His existence questioned I feel a ghastly for- 
lornness in a mad world." The inspiration of labor 
is faith in God, faith in man, faith in the moral 
order of the world, faith in progress. The religious 
man should have a sane view of life, should have 
convictions, and the courage of his convictions. 
He should believe that his work all counts toward 
some great purpose. 

The impulse to reverence and prayer is an essen- 
tial fact, as real as the inborn tendency to physical 
and mental action. Its development is necessary to 
the complete man. The religious nature obeys the 
great law of power through effort, and increases 
strength by use. He who by scientific analysis 
comes to doubt the value of his ethical feeling has 
not learned the essential truth of philosophy, 
namely, that a thing's origin must not be mistaken 
for its character. 

Some tendencies of the best scientific thought 
of to-day, seen here and there, confirm this view of 
man's nature. Here are some fragments, expressed, 
not literally, but in substance : It is the business of 
science to analyze the entire content of human 
consciousness into atomic sensations, but there its 
work ends. The man of history, of freedom and 
responsibility, whose deeds we approve or disap- 
prove, is the real man, a being of transcendent 
worth, aspiring toward perfect ideals; and the 



THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK. 



169 



teacher must carry this conception of the child's 
nature into the work of education. It is a scientific 
fact that prayer is for the health of the soul. It is 
useless to theorize on the subject — men pray because 
it is their nature ; they can not help it. Even if 
prayer does not change the will of God, at least it 
does change the will of man, which may be the 
object of prayer. The Christian experience shows 
that prayer is a communion of man's spirit with 
God, the Spirit. John Fiske affirms the reality of 
religion. He argues that the progress of life has 
been achieved through adjustment to external real- 
ities ; that the religious idea has played a dominant 
part in history ; that all the analogies of evolution 
show that man's religious nature cannot be an ad- 
justment to an external non-reality. He says : 
" Of all the implications of the doctrine of evolution 
with regard to Man, I believe the very deepest and 
strongest to be that which asserts the Everlasting 
Reality of Religion." 

In this message to students we have emphasized 
a particular ideal, namely, normal activity, because 
one's own effort and experience count most for 
growth and power. 

" It was better youth 
Should strive, through acts uncouth, 
Toward making, than repose on aught found made." 

Students are at an age when to them the roses 
nod and the stars seem to wink. Their mental 
landscape is filled with budding flowers, singing 
birds, and rosy dawns. Every one has a right to 
consider his own perfection and enjoyment, his own 



170 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



emotions. One is better for his healthful recreations, 
his aspirations and ideals, his perceptions of beauty 
and his divine communings — the sweetness and light 
of the soul. We can only ask that the main purpose 
and trend of life may be laborious and useful, even 
strenuous and successful. 

Lowell wrote of the pioneers who settled New 
England that they were men 

" Who pitched a state as other men pitch tents, 
And led the march of time to great events." 

The pioneers of this Commonwealth were men who 
here pitched a state as other men pitch tents, and 
are leading the march of time to great events. The 
age, America, offer great opportunities to educated 
young men and women. Use them with courage. 
King Henry IV. of France once gained a great 
victory at Arques. After the battle, as he was 
leading his troops toward Paris, he met one of his 
generals coming up late with a detachment of the 
army, and thus greeted him, " Go hang yourself, 
brave Crillon ! We fought at Arques and you were 
not there," as though the greatest privilege in life 
were an opportunity to contend and win for one's 
self a victory. 

A few years ago I went to Ayr, the birthplace of 
Burns. I visited the poet's cottage, walked by the 
Alloway Kirk where Tam o' Shanter beheld the 
witch dance, crossed the Auld Brig and wandered 
by the banks and braes o' bonny Doon — and it is a 
beautiful stream. I found myself repeating lines 
from " Tam o' Shanter," " Bonny Doon," ** Scots 
Wha Hae wi' Wallace Bled," and from some of 
the sweeter and nobler songs of Burns. And I 



THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK. 



171 



thought of the mission of the poet. The scenery 
in and about Ayr is beautiful, but there is many 
another region equally attractive. The people with 
whom Burns dwelt, his neighbors and friends, were 
commonplace men and women, knowing the hard- 
ships, the drudgery, the pettiness of life. And yet 
he so sang of these scenes and these people, so 
touched every chord of the human heart, that annu- 
ally thirty thousand travellers visit Ayr to pay their 
homage at the poet's shrine. The poetic view of 
life is the right one. The poet sees the reality in 
the commonplace. Our surroundings are filled with 
wonderful and varied beauty when we open our 
eyes to the truth. Our friends and companions are 
splendid men and women when we see them at their 
worth. For happiness as well as success add poetry 
to heroism. 

" The Inscrutable who set this orb awhirl 

Gave power to strength that effort might attain ; 
Gave power to wit that knowledge might direct ; 
And so with penalties, incentives, gains, 
Limits, and compensations intricate, 
He dowered this earth, that man should never rest 
Save as his Maker's will be carried out. 

There is no easy, unearned joy on earth 
Save what God gives — the lustiness of youth. 
And love's dear pangs. All other joys we gain 
By striving, and so qualified we are 
That effort's zest our need as much consoles 
As effort's gain. Both issues are our due. 



Better when work is past 
Back into dust dissolve and help a seed 
Climb upward, than with strength still full 
Deny to God His claim and thwart His wish." 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH. 

Mark Twain quotes a schoolboy as saying: 
** Faith is beheving what you know ain't so." This 
definition is turned from humor into seriousness by 
some modern thinkers when they charge immorality 
against all whose beliefs are not scientifically estab- 
lished on sufficient evidence. They look upon 
what they consider unwarranted beliefs as a species 
of lying to one's self, demoralizing to intellect and 
character. If no element of faith may anywhere 
be tolerated, these same thinkers should reexamine 
their own foundations. The only thorough agnostic 
in history or literature, agnostic even toward his 
own agnosticism, is Charles Kingsley's Raphael 
Aben-Ezra. Let us listen to him. " Here am I, at 
last ! fairly and safely landed at the very bottom of 
the bottomless. . . . No man, angel or demon 
can this day cast it in my teeth that I am weak 
enough to believe or disbelieve any phenomenon or 
theory in or concerning heaven or earth ; or even 
that any such heaven, earth, phenomena or theo- 
ries exist — or otherwise." 

In a last analysis our very foundation principles 
rest on a ground of faith, and a clear knowledge of 
this fact may make us more humble in the presence 
of other claims on our belief. Whenever the ad- 
venturous philosophic mind gazes over the dizzy 
edge at the " bottomless," it draws back and gains 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH. 173 

a firm footing on the reality of conscious ideas. To 
abandon this is annihilation. 

Years ago an old friend of mine, very worthy, 
but somewhat self-opinioned and truculent, in a 
discussion on religious thought exclaimed : " What ! 
believe in anything I can't see, touch, hear, smell, 
taste ? No, sir ! " He represented the uneducated 
instinctive belief in the reality of the outer world as 
revealed through the senses ; and he would have 
violently affirmed the reliability of the senses and 
the existence of material things. But philosophy 
shows these also to be of faith. 

Had he been asked whether he had a knowledge 
of space and time and of certain indisputable facts 
concerning them, and whether he could see or hear 
these entities and intuitive truths, he would have 
paused to think. The axioms of mathematics 
would have been a veritable Socratic poser to him, 
and he would have withdrawn from his position — 
would have acknowledged some truths as more cer- 
tain, by the nature and need of the mind, than the 
existence of matter. 

The modern scientist for practical purposes pos- 
tulates the existence of conscious ideas, of the outer 
material world, of space and time. He accepts axi- 
omatic truths. He goes farther; he postulates the 
uniformity of nature, and the validity of his reason- 
ing processes. He discovers natural laws, and pro- 
pounds theories concerning them. He investigates 
the physical correlates of mental processes. He 
has his favorite hypotheses concerning phenomena 
that defy his powers of analysis. He shows the 
process of the world as a whole to be evolution. 

So far we have no controversy and should have 



174 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



none, did not some eminent investigators in the field 
of natural science claim to have covered the entire 
realm of legitimate inquiry, and deny the right to 
raise further questions or entertain beliefs, however 
strongly they may be prompted by our very consti- 
tution, concerning the origin and end of things, the 
meaning of the world, and man's place in it. To 
the well-rounded nature, faith is not necessarily lim- 
ited to the physical world, and the credulity implied 
in unwarranted denial is at least as unscientific as 
positive faith. 

Human nature rebels against conclusions wholly 
discordant with its best instincts, and, in the light 
of the most recent data and speculation, begins 
anew a discussion as old as philosophy. The subject 
is all the more important, because the uneducated 
mind, misled by superficial catch phrases of mate- 
rialism, fails to know the reverent spirit of true 
science. 

Here is an illustration relating to the general 
theme. A prominent biologist puts this statement 
before the reading public : " There is no ego except 
that which arises from the coordination of the 
nerve cells." I might take the contrary of the pro- 
position and reply: " There is an ego not adequately 
described by your ' colonial consciousness ' theory." 
Regarding each position as dogmatic, perhaps mine 
is as good as the biologist's. As to evidence, he 
founds his belief on the general fact of evolution 
and specifically upon the functions, partly known, 
partly conjectured, of nerve cells in the brain. He 
has no knowledge that a unit-being called the ego 
does not exist. His is the faith of denial of some- 
thing which from his standpoint he can neither 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH. 



175 



prove nor disprove. I also accept the facts of evo- 
lution and of the mechanism of the brain. I base my 
belief in the ego on certain views of other biologists, 
and on data of consciousness, morality, and religion, 
and the insight of all subjective philosophy. My 
faith is one of assent to something not admitting 
demonstrative proof. Have I sufficient reason for 
my faith in passing beyond the inductions of mate- 
rial science ? 

We present some latest views of eminent biolo- 
gists. While evolution must be accepted as a fact, 
there is great uncertainty as to the factors that pro- 
duce changes in the organic world. To-day there 
is small evidence that variations are produced by 
direct influence of environment. In the germ is 
the * ' whole machinery and the mystery of heredity. 
Since the microscope fails to reveal the causes, either 
of normal development or of variations, some are 
forced to accept, as the simplest and most rational 
hypothesis, the existence of a psychic principle in 
the germ. The facts appear to support the doctrine 
of purpose in evolution. So earnest and able a 
thinker as Professor Le Conte frankly affirms : " With 
the appearance of Man another factor was intro- 
duced, namely, conscious cooperation in his own evo- 
lution, striving to attai^i an ideal. ' ' 

Professor Muensterberg is of high authority in ex- 
perimental psychology and besides has a keen philo- 
sophic mind. His paper entitled *' Psychology 
and the Real Life" is instructive and significant. 
He shows that it is the business of psychology to 
analyze the ideas and emotions, the whole content 
of consciousness, into sensations, to investigate the 



1^6 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

whole psychological mechanism, but that the pri- 
mary reality is not a possible object of psychology 
and natural science. By his view it takes an act of 
free will to declare the will unfree ; there can be no 
science, thought, or doubt that is not the child of 
duties ; even skeptical denial demands to be re- 
garded as absolute truth ; there is a truth, a beauty, 
a morality independent of psychological conditions; 
psychology is the last word of a materialistic cen- 
tury, it may become the introductory word of an 
idealistic century. His views are maintained with 
force and power of conviction. 

But these references are only incidental to the 
purpose of this discussion. They may serve to show 
(i) that science has no real proof against the dictum, 

Evolution is God's way of doing things ; " (2) that 
on the contrary it may support the spiritual view 
of the world ; (3) that there are grounds of faith 
with which science properly has no business. 

Evolution is according to nature's laws. Man is 
a product of evolution. Man possesses poetry and 
sentiment, conceives the beauty of holiness, and has 
speculative reason. None of these can properly be 
explained by merely materialistic evolution ; they 
are not necessary to preservation of life. We have 
tried to wholly account for the ideals, emotions, and 
aspirations of human nature by analyzing them into 
primitive sensations and instincts. This is the fatal 
error of materialistic philosophy. The process of 
evolution is not analysis ; it is synthesis, develop- 
ment, the appearance of new factors — a gradual rev- 
elation. It is our business to analyze, but, also, to try 
to understand the higher complex, the perfected 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH. 



177 



product. The first stand of spiritual philosophy is 
faith in the validity of our own evolved being, and 
to this we have as much right as to faith in the reli- 
ability of our five senses. 

The geologist might say : To me the grandeur of 
the mountain means nothing ; I know how it was 
made. The cooling and contraction of the earth, 
the crushing and uplifting of strata, the action of 
air, wind, and water, the sculpturing of time, the 
planting of vegetation by a chance breeze — and you 
have your mountain, a thing of science. Yet Cole- 
ridge, standing in the vale of Chamounix and gaz- 
ing on Mont Blanc, 

" Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused, 
Into the mighty Vision passing — there, 
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven," 

found it an emblem of sublimity, a voice from the 
throne of God. We shall find it hard to believe 
that the poetry of science can be explained on a 
merely physical basis. One may say : The religious 
sentiment means nothing to me ; I know its origin ; 
it is the result of bad dreams. A primitive ances- 
tor, after a successful hunt, ate too much raw meat 
and dreamed of his grandfather. Thus arose the 
belief in disembodied spirits and a whole train of 
false conceptions. Yet we shall hardly grant that 
the religious feeling of the martyrs, which enabled 
the exalted spirit to lose the sense of unutterable 
physical torture, is adequately explained by the 
dream hypothesis. 

A Beethoven string orchestra, to the musical 
mind, discourses most excellent music. It is a con- 
nected series of sublimated and elusive metaphors, 
12 



i;8 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



arousing the harmonies of the soul, touching its 
chords of sweetness, purity, beauty, and nobility. 
Yet there are minds that find in it nothing — pardon 
the quotation — but the friction of horsehair on 
catgut. There are minds to which these grand 
mountains, this deep sky, these groves of pine are 
nothing but rock and vapor and wood. The ele- 
ments make no sweet tones for them ; they can not 
hear the music of the spheres. To them honor, 
courage, morality, beauty, religion, are but refined 
forms of crude animal instincts, by aid of which the 
race has survived in its struggle for existence. 
There are no soul harmonies — nothing but the beat- 
ing of the primitive tom-tom. They believe nothing 
which can not be verified by the methods of physical 
science. They have no faith. 

How many a man of science, on some slight hint 
pointing in a given direction, with faith and courage 
has pursued his investigations, adopting hypothesis 
after hypothesis, rejecting, adjusting, the world 
meanwhile laughing at his folly and credulity, until 
he has discovered and proclaimed a great truth. 
When in the world of mind we find phenomena 
calling for explanation, needs that can be met in 
only a certain way, higher impulses reaching out 
toward objects whose existence they prove and 
whose nature they define, shall we show less faith 
and courage because of some dogmatic view that 
there is no reality beyond the world of material 
existence ? In this universe of mystery, anything 
may be supposed possible for which there is evi- 
dence, and any theory is rational that will best ex- 
plain the facts. If we have not the sense to under- 
stand the deepest conceptions of philosophy, let us 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH. lyg 

at least have the sense to stick to that common 
sense with which God has endowed us in order that 
we may know by faith the supreme truths concern- 
ing man. 

Somewhere and somehow in the nature of things 
is an ideal that made us as we are — an ideal that is 
adequate to our nature, need, and conception. God 
at the beginning and God at the end of the natural 
world, and the world of consciousness seems a pos- 
tulate that is necessary and warranted. Professor 
James writes of an old lady who believed that the 
world rests on a great rock, and that the first rock 
rests on a rock ; being urged further, she exclaimed 
that it was rocky all up and down. Unless we pos- 
tulate a spiritual foundation of things that is self- 
active and rational, we are no better off than the old 
lady. This appears to be a rational world, for it is 
a world that makes science possible ; we believe it 
has a rational Creator. 

We commonly account for our ideals as con- 
structed in a simple, mechanical way ; but the ex- 
planation will fail to satisfy the mind of artist or 
saint in his exalted moments when he has visions of 
perfection. He must conceive of a Being who pos- 
sesses the attributes of perfect beauty and goodness. 
Belief in God consecrates man's endeavor to attain 
the highest standards. Without God the world has 
not a home-seeming for man. As in the dream in 
Vergil, always he seems to be left alone, always to 
be going on a long journey in a desert land, unat- 
tended. 

Philosophy has spent much time and energy to 
discover the origin of evil ; a saner quest would be 
the origin of good in the world. We know that in 



l8o EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

accounting for evil there is always an unexplained 
remainder — the righteous suffering, and the weak 
crushed under burdens too heavy. It may be that 
Spencer's age of perfection, seen away down the 
vista of evolution, will, when realized, not be invit- 
ing. Some one suggests that then men will be per- 
fect, but perfectly idiotic. It is the great moral 
paradox that perfection must be obtained through 
struggle with imperfection. Laurels worn but not 
won are but a fool's cap. Freedom is possible only 
in a world of good and evil, a world of choice, and 
with freedom the humblest creature is infinitely 
above the most perfect mechanism made and con- 
trolled by a blind necessity. Cease to prate of a life 
of perennial ease under June skies ; the divinity 
within us rises in majesty and will not have it so. 
After all, those who are overcome in the struggle 
may have their reward ; at Thermopylae the Per- 
sians won the laurels, the Spartans the glory. 

Does evolution transform the nature of duty into 
a mere calculation of the sum of happiness ? On 
the contrary, it adds to duty a practical way of dis- 
covering duties. Evolution affirms the truth that 
knowledge of right and wrong is a growth, and that 
new conditions bring new problems. The laws of 
nature and the organization of society promptly 
teach us applied ethics. True, we no longer search 
for eternally fixed codes ; but whatever conduces 
to happiness and genuine welfare, whatever conduces 
to the beauty, dignity, and goodness of self and 
others is, as ever, a stern duty. It is not in the 
nature of man to bridge over the chasm between 
right, known as right, and wrong, known as wrong. 
The moral imperative, Turn toward the light, seek 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH. igl 

to see your duty and perform it, is " a presence 
which is not to be put by, which neither listlessness 
nor mad endeavor can utterly abolish or destroy." 

" Faith means belief in something concerning 
which doubt is still theoretically possible," says a 
modern scientific writer. He continues : " Faith is 
the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue 
of which is not certified to us in advance. It is in 
fact the same moral quality which we call courage in 
practical affairs." We admire confidence and cour- 
age in the world of affairs, even when disaster may 
possibly follow. Have we not in our hearts the 
" substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
things not seen," which constitute the faith of St. 
Paul ? And shall we not use the courage of faith 
to seek a supreme good, when, though we do not find 
it, there is a reward even in the seeking ? If I were 
to define faith I would call it the X-ray of the soul. 

There can be no absolute break between old 
thought and new. The history of thought is a his- 
tory of evolution. Modern science has not de- 
stroyed the old grounds of faith ; it enables us to 
correct the beliefs built thereon. The next step of 
science will be a recognition and examination of 
subjective problems as such. When discarding old 
things, separate the treasure from the rubbish. If 
you have ceased to pray selfishly for rain, you need 
not deny the efficacy of prayer for change of heart, 
forgiveness of sins, and communion of spirit. If you 
cannot accept certain views of the Trinity, you 
need not reject the sublime Christian philosophy, or 
refuse to pay homage to the perfection of Christ. 
If you have discarded some doctrine of inspiration 
of the Bible, you need not deny or neglect the value 



1 82 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

of the divine ethical teachings of the Hebrews, or 
their grand sacred poetry — 

" Those Hebrew songs that triumph, trust or grieve, — 
Verses that smite the soul as with a sword, 
And open all the abysses with a word." 

There is a faith which is a personal and conscious 
relation of man to God. It is said that in its true 
nature faith can be justified by nothing but itself. 
Here we enter the temple of the human heart and 
approach the holy of holies. This we do with rev- 
erent mien, even with fear and trembling. We 
quote from Prof. T. H. Green : " That God is. 
Reason entitles us to say with the same certainty as 
that the world is or that we ourselves are. What 
He is, it does not, indeed, enable us to say in the 
same way in which we make propositions about 
matters of fact, but it moves us to seek to become 
as He is, to become like Him, to become con- 
sciously one with Him, to have the fruition of his 
Godhead. In this sense it is that Reason issues in 
the life of Faith. . . . It is our very familiarity 
with God's expression of Himself in the institutions 
of society, in the moral law, in the language and 
inner life of Christians, in our own consciences, 
that helps to blind us to its divinity." 

There is a poem, from an author not widely known, 
entitled " The Hound of Heaven." It will affect 
you according to the education, experience, and be- 
liefs of each ; but appeal to you it will, for in all is 
an insistent something that makes for righteousness. 

" I fled Him, down the nights and down the days ; 
I fled Him, down the arches of the years ; 
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways 

Of my own mind ; and in the midst of tears 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH. 183 

I hid from Him, and under running laughter. 

Up vistaed hopes I sped ; 

And shot, precipitated 
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, 
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. 

But with unhurrying chase. 

And unperturbed pace, 
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy. 

They beat — and a Voice beat 

More instant than the Feet — 
' All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.' " 

The poem recounts a life made tragic by many a 
human error, but ever forced to listen to the fol- 
lowing " Feet." It closes thus : 

" Halts by me that footfall : 

Is my gloom, after all, 
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? 

' Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, 

I am He Whom thou seekest ! 
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.' " 

To me it requires greater faith to call the Christian 
experience an illusion than to accept its reality and 
validity. 

The true poet is the living embodiment of in- 
stinctive faith. His mind and heart are keenly alive 
to God's revelation of Himself in man and nature. 
He is a seer. His themes are the truths that come 
to him in visions from the realms of truth. He 
sees the principle of beauty in things ; and familiar 
scenes, commonplace experiences are clothed in a 
spiritual glory. He accepts the world of facts and 
of science, but gives them their real meaning. 
Poetic insight, a thing so much contemned, because 
so little understood, is one of the best illustrations 



1 84 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

and evidences of the nature of faith. Wordsworth 
calls poetry " the breath and finer spirit of all 
knowledge." 

A few months ago I chanced to be looking from a 
railroad train near Lake Erie in the very early dawn. 
I beheld, as I supposed, a beautiful expanse of 
water, with islands and inlets, and, beyond, a range 
of blue hills. I was lost in admiration of the view. 
As the light increased, a suspicion, at last growing 
into certainty, arose that I was the subject of an 
illusion, and that my beautiful landscape was but a 
changing scene of cloud and open sky on the hori- 
zon. But the blue hills still seemed real ; soon 
they, too, were resolved into clouds, and only a 
common wooded country remained to the vision. 
The analogy to the dawn of civilization and the 
flight of superstition, and, finally, of faith, forced 
itself upon me, and I was troubled, seeing no escape 
from the application. Just then the sun arose, 
bringing the glory of light to the eye, and with it 
came a thrilling mental flash. There was the solu- 
tion, the all-revealing light, the greater truth, with- 
out which neither the appearance of the solid earth 
nor of its seeming aerial counterpart would have 
been possible. Both evidenced the greater exist- 
ence. Are not our fancies and our facts, our errors 
in the search of truth and our truths, our doubts 
and our faith, our life and activity and being, proofs 
of a Universal Existence — the revealer of truth, the 
source of truth, and the Truth ? 

This address has more than a formal purpose. 
Our beliefs in great measure determine our practical 
life. Freedom, God, and Immortality are concep- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH. 185 

tions that have ruled in the affairs of men and made 
the best products of civilization ; they must still 
rule in the individual, if he would grow to his full 
stature. We are in a century of doubt, but I firmly 
believe that in the ashes of the old faith the vital 
spark still glows, and that from them, phoenix-like, 
will rise again the spiritual life in new strength and 
beauty. 

Show your faith by your works ; faith without 
works is dead. A mere philosophic belief in ab- 
stract ideals, not lived in some measure, may be 
worse than useless. A mere intellectual faith that 
does not touch the heart and brighten life and 
make work a blessing lacks the vital element. Fol- 
low your ideals closely with effort. Give life breadth 
as well as length ; the totality will be the sum of 
your thought, feeling, and action. When the active 
conflict is over and the heroes recount their battles, 
may you be able to say: " I, too, was there." 

There is still a practical side. Many young men 
have powers of growth and possibilities of success 
beyond their present belief ; faith creates results. 
Every one has rare insights and rare impulses, 
showing his powers and urging him to action ; it is 
fatal to ignore them. Faith is needed in business ; 
confidence begets confidence. It is needed in social 
life; friendship demands to be met on equal terms. 
It is a ground of happiness; suspicion creates gloom 
and pessimism. It is needed for practical coopera- 
tion ; suspicion is isolated. It is needed by the 
educator ; faith and love make zeal in the calling. 
It is due even the criminal ; in most men there is 
more of good than bad. Charity for the sins and 
misfortunes of humanity, hope for the best, faith in 



1 86 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

our endeavor must attend successful effort to aid 
men. 

After all it is the essential spirit that one culti- 
vates within him that will determine his manifold 
deeds. We can invoke no greater blessing than a 
character that in all ways will assert the highest dig- 
nity that belongs to a human soul. Be brave in 
your faith. When materialism, indifference, doubt, 
ease, and unseemly pleasure claim you for theirs (the 
Devil's own), let your answer be what is expressed 
in Carlyle's " Everlasting Yea " : " And then was it 
that my whole Me stood up, in native God-created 
majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest : / 
am not thine, but Free ! " 

When I see some grand old man, full of faith, 
courage, optimism, and cheerfulness, whose life has 
conformed to the moral law, who has wielded the 
right arm of his freedom boldly for every good cause, 
come to the end of life with love for man and trust 
in God, seeing the way brighten before him, turning 
his sunset into morning, I must believe that he rep- 
resents the survival of the fittest, that his ideals are 
not the mere fictions of a blind nature, serving for 
the preservation of his physical being, but that the 
order of his life has been in accord with realities. 



EVOLUTION OF A PERSONAL IDEAL. 

A FAMOUS artist once painted a portrait on a 
unique plan. He secured a copy of every photo- 
graph of the subject from his babyhood. When the 
painting was finished, there appeared in it the pic- 
ures of seven people of different ages, skilfully 
grouped and variously employed, but all portraits 
of the same person, each representing a stage of 
growth. We shall not attempt the work of the 
artist, but will endeavor to furnish the brush and 
colors, leaving you to fill in the sketches, now and 
at future times, at your leisure. 

A tale is told of a man who awoke one night 
thinking of his past and groaning in evident mental 
distress. To the solicitous inquiry of his guardian 
angel, he replied: " I am thinking about the people 
I used to be." The angel, smiling, said: ** I am ^ 
thinking seriously about the people you are going to 
be " — thinking of 

" The soul that has learned to break its chains, 
The heart grown tenderer through its pains, 
The mind made richer for its thought, 
The character remorse has wrought 
To far undreamed capacities ; 
The will that sits a king at ease. 
Nay, marvel not, for I plainly see 
And joy in the people you're going to be." 

The gradual realization of higher and higher types 
is the general law of evolution in the organic world ; 



1 88 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

it is also the process of the ideal spiritual develop- 
ment of the individual man. The potency of an 
infinitely varied and beautiful world was in the 
primeval mist. The potency of each higher type of 
being lies in the simpler form preceding. Ideally 
the potency of a soul of strength and beauty, of 
continuous development, is in the child and youth. 
The self of to-day is the material of possibility 
which should grow into the higher self of to-morrow. 
Growth is not merely gain in knowledge and in- 
tellectual power. The science of education must 
include a vision of the entire human soul with its 
need of sympathy and direction, its vague dreams 
of possibility, its ideals half-realized. We must view 
the scale of feelings from the lowest animal instinct 
to the most refined ethical emotions, the order of 
their worth from the meanest vindictiveness to the 
highest altruism under God and duty, and note the 
strussfle for the survival of the fittest of the im- 
pulses and motives under the guidance of reason 
and with the responsibility of freedom. 

We see men, yet in the vigor of life, men of learn- 
ing, of position, of opportunity, complacent in their 
attainments, fixed in ideas and methods adapted to 
a previous generation or a different environment, 
psychically prematurely old, their powers half-devel- 
oped, their life work half-done. The men who 
reach the complete development of their powers 
constantly renew their youth, and march with mod- 
ern events. 

We see young graduates, men of power, who, 
through degenerate tendencies, lack of faith, lack of 
insight or lack of courage, remain stationary and 



EVOLUTION OF A PERSONAL IDEAL. 189 

satisfied in the grade to which their diplomas duly 
testify. They have as much life and growth and are 
as ornamental as a painted canvas tree in a garden. 
A lazy indifferent man once said he would as soon 
be dead as alive. When asked why he did not kill 
himself, he could only explain that he would as soon^ 
be alive as dead. 

In the established church is sometimes observed 
by its devotees a special season of solitude and 
silence for religious meditation ; it is called a " re- 
treat. " There is a German tale of an aged grand- 
father who, every Christmas season, spent a day 
alone in meditation upon the year and the years gone 
by, making a reckoning with himself, with his failures 
and his blessings, and casting a most conscientious 
account. On that day the noisy children were 
hushed by the servants — " The master is keeping 
his retreat" — and they went about in silent won- 
der and imagined he was making himself Christmas 
gifts in his quiet room upstairs. When he reap- 
peared in the evening, after his day of solitude, he 
seemed by his quiet, gentle manners and thought- 
lit face to have received heaven-sent gifts. 

I shall never forget the passage of Vergil which in 
my school days gave rise in me to a new sense of 
beauty in literature ; nor shall I forget the unique 
and rich experience of the revelation. Every one 
has at times a new birth, a disclosure of hitherto 
unknown capacities and powers. 

The soul must keep its retreats, not necessarily 
on church-anniversary days, but at epochs, at peri- 
ods of dissatisfaction with the past, at stages of 
new insight — must have a reckoning with itself and 
readjust itself to life. When one reviews the pano- 



igo 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



rama of his own history, and finds it inartistic, a 
profitless daub, empty of the ideal or heroic, he is 
keeping a retreat. When a new estimate of values 
and possibilities appears, he has experienced a con- 
version, has taken a new step in the evolution of 
his ideal life. The revolt of the soul may be as 
necessary to its health and growth as the upheaval 
of a nation is essential to its development. It 
is a battle for new principles, for advance, for 
freedom. 

TolstoY relates a most striking reminiscence of his 
own life, substantially thus : It was in 1872 that 
the Tolstoi' of to-day saw the light. Then a new 
insight revealed his former life as empty. It was 
on a beautiful spring morning with bright sun, 
singing birds, and humming insects. He had halted 
to rest his horse by a wayside cross. Some peasants 
passing stopped there to offer their devotions. He 
was touched to the depths by their simple faith, and 
when he took up his journey he knew that the 
Kingdom of God is within us. He says: " It was 
then, twenty-three years ago, that the Tolstoi of 
to-day sprang into existence." 

President Garfield, when at the head of Hiram 
College, once addressed his students, in a way that 
made a lasting impression, on the subject of " Mar- 
gins." Personal distinction, success, depend, not 
on the average bulk of knowledge, power, and skill, 
but on that margin that extends a little beyond the 
reach of one's fellows, a margin gained by some 
extra devotion, by sacrifice and work, by ideals a 
little more advanced or more clearly seen. 

Some recent and notable inductions of physiolog- 
ical psychology along the line of evolution reaffirm 



EVOLUTION OF A PERSONAL IDEAL. 



191 



that without pain there can be no happiness, that 
without struggle there can be no positive character, 
that at times punishment may be most salutary and 
that a deadhead in society degenerates as does a 
parasite in the animal kingdom. Since these views 
are in line with the teachings of instinct and reason, 
from old Plato down, we may believe that evolution 
as applied to the spiritual nature of man is, indeed, 
becoming a hopeful doctrine. We have had some- 
what too much of Herbert Spencer's pleasure the- 
ory, and pursuit of inclination, and the discipline of 
natural consequences, and lines of least resistance. 
The moral drama must be enacted on a field of 
conflict. 

The principle of personal evolution is ** ideals and 
action." Mr. Gladstone's wonderful character and 
great career are a pointed illustration of this fact. 
Even his fixed standards of conduct were a contribu- 
tion to his growth and greatness. He always asked 
concerning a policy of state: Is it just? No un- 
worthy motive was ever known to determine his 
public or his private acts. While working ever ac- 
cording to permanent standards of right, his was 
essentially a life of change and growth. Mr. Glad- 
stone had a mind always seeking truth, and, more- 
over, had a rare capacity for receiving new ideas. 
In his history one can discover many distinct stages 
of development. He himself acknowledges three 
great '* transmigrations of spirit" in his parlia- 
mentary career. He broke away from his early 
political traditions and, in consequence, more than 
once was obliged to seek new constituents who 
** marched with the movement of his mind." He 
was ever " struggling toward the light," and was 



192 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



ever a fighter. His political opponents said of him 
that his foot was always in the stirrup. His mind 
rested not by inactivity, but by " stretching itself 
out in another direction." He threw himself into 
new and important movements for humanity with 
tremendous zeal and force. 

Lord Macaulay pithily expresses a law of human 
progress: ** The point which yesterday was invis- 
ible is our goal to-day, and will be our starting post 
to-morrow." Maurice Maeterlinck says : " If at 
the moment you think or say something that is 
too beautiful to be true in you — if you have but 
endeavored to think or to say it to-day, on the 
morrow it will be true. We must try to be more 
beautiful than ourselves ; we shall never distance 
our soul." 

In the problem of growth do not neglect Emer- 
son's principle of compensation. As men injure or 
help others, so they injure or help themselves. Pun- 
ishment is the inseparable attendant of crime. Re- 
quital is swift, sure, and exact. Vice makes spiritual 
blindness. The real drama of life is within. Some 
one has said that punishment for misdeeds is not 
something which happens to a man, but something 
which happens in a man. Balzac describes a magic 
skin, endowed with power to measure the term of 
life of its possessor, which shrank with his every 
expressed wish. Personal worth grows or shrinks 
with the daily life and thought. Every one can will 
his own growth in strength and symmetry or can 
become dwarfed and degenerate. Wrong takes 
away from the sum of worth ; virtue makes increase 
from the source of all good. Emerson says that 
even a man's defects may be turned to good. For 



EVOLUTION OF A PERSONAL IDEAL. 



193 



instance, if he has a disposition that fails to invite 
companionship, he gains habits of self-help, and 
thus, " like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell 
with pearl." 

If you would see the fulness of God's revelation 
in men, look into the minds of those whose biog- 
raphies are worth writing — men who in affairs of 
the world have shown clear thought and accurate 
judgment, and in spiritual things have had visions 
that may strengthen and confirm your feeble faith. 
Study the record of their words spoken at the fire- 
side in the presence of intimate and congenial friends, 
when they showed glimpses of the real self. Learn in 
biography the history of great souls and see in them 
the ideal which is the ideal of the race, and, hence, 
your ideal. With the going out of this century 
some great lives have ended — lives that embodied 
high types of rugged, honest satire, political power, 
poetic thought, pure statesmanship, ethical stand- 
ards, religious faith, scientific devotion. Their 
histories have been written, and enough is in them 
to stir the semiconscious indolent nature of any 
young man to cultivate a high personal ideal. When 
I left college my first investment was in a few addi- 
tional good books. I advise students to buy a few 
of the best biographies recently published, and read 
them with a reverent mind. 

When you see a man of marked power, you may 
be sure, always sure, that he has used means of 
growth which average people ignore, means without 
which his strength would never have appeared. He 
has been a student, perhaps of Plato, of Shake- 
speare, of the Bible, of science or of human nature. 

13 



194 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



He has gone deeply into the character or writings 
of master minds in some field of knowledge or ac- 
tivity. If he has a truly great nature he is able to 
find in many a passage of Hebrew writings a power 
that welled up from the great hearts of the prophets 
of old — or a wisdom that gradually evolved with civ- 
ilization through experiment, disaster, struggle, and 
contrition, and was corrected and formulated with 
rare understanding by the few great minds of his- 
tory. Such writings are a very wellspring of knowl- 
edge and understanding for a young man of this or 
any age. 

Have you read the earlier as well as the later 
writings of Rudyard Kipling ? What a growth of 
power ! The evolution of his ideal ever promises 
and realizes greater things. When recently it 
seemed that the riper fruits of his progress would be 
denied us, the keenest solicitude was everywhere 
manifest. It was a spontaneous tribute to the 
principle of ideal spiritual evolution in the individ- 
ual. We now know Kipling's secret. In his weak- 
ness and his sorrow he has already turned to a new 
and more ambitious undertaking and has gathered 
to himself all material that may enable him to pluck 
out from his subject the heart of its mystery, and 
reveal it to the world of thought and culture. It is 
with the magic of industry that he evolves the ideal 
of his life. 

The following story is told of Kipling — that it is 
not authentic does not rob it of its use : Father 
and son were on a voyage. The father, suffering 
from seasickness, had retired to his cabin, when an 
oflficer appeared and cried : " Your son has climbed 
out on the foreyard, and if he lets go he'll be 



EVOLUTION OF A PERSONAL IDEAL. 195 

drowned ; we cannot save him." " Oh, is that 
all ? " replied Mr. Kipling ; " he won't let go." 

Be men of to-day ; the past is useful to make us 
wise in the present. The poet Tennyson had a 
wonderful influence in his generation. His influ- 
ence is due not alone to his rich thought and poetic 
skill ; he had the broad liberal view that could adapt 
itself to the changing world of science, philosophy, 
and religion, and he thus opened up the avenues 
of approach to all classes of thinkers. He was a 
man with an evolving ideal, a free, sane, healthy 
mind. 

Poetry is not a thing of the past ; it has not yet 
become familiar with its new themes. Kipling can 
sing the ** Song of Steam " and write the romance 
of the " Day's Work " — can find poetry in a loco- 
motive, a bridge, a ship or an engine. Kipling is 
right when he makes McAndrew, the hard-headed 
engineer of an ocean liner, see in the vast motor 
mechanism an " orchestra sublime," " singing like 
the morning stars," and proclaiming : " Not unto 
us the praise, or man." " From coupler-flange to 
spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God" — and this 
vision is always the ultimate ground of poetry. On 
a palace steamer between New York and the New 
England coast I once heard an uncultured workman 
exclaim : ** When I watch this mighty engine, with 
its majestic, powerful movement, I feel that there 
is a God." At first thought the sentiment was 
humorously illogical, but his instinct was right. 
The works of nature and the works of man alike 
suggest a divine origin — God working in nature and 
working through man. 



iq6 education and life. 

If this is a divine world, then there is no claim of 
the commonplace, no form of daily labor, no need 
of the unfortunate, no problem of society or gov- 
ernment that is not a theme of dignity and worthy 
of attention and helpful effort. The form of truth 
is an empty, useless abstraction, unless it is given a 
content, unless it adjusts wrongs, removes evils, im- 
proves material conditions, and strengthens growth 
among all classes of people to-day. The man who 
beautifies his lawn, plants trees, lays good walks or 
cleans the streets is made more conscious of the 
divine within him — is a better man. Spinoza re- 
garded his skill in making lenses to be as essential a 
part of his life as his philosophical interest. 

Every advance in civilization changes the per- 
spective, and new views and truths appear. Within 
a few years we have seen in America almost an en- 
tire change of attitude regarding many essential 
political and social questions. Throughout the 
world, Christianity, by clearer interpretation of its 
spirit, is gaining new influence in practical fields. 
New problems have not the enchantment of distance ; 
history and poetry have not thrown a halo about 
them ; but they have the interest of present, practi- 
cal, living issues. Every great man has attained his 
self-realization as a creative factor in the work of his 
own age. Take a hand in making current history. 

Successful men have shown at the close of their 
student life only the hope of what they finally be- 
came. But they were men who knew how to cher- 
ish every helpful impulse, to learn from every 
experience, to profit by each fresh insight, to con- 
centrate their powers upon single tasks, and at each 



EVOLUTION OF A PERSONAL IDEAL. 



197 



fulfilment look forward to still greater undertakings. 
Such minds wear the beauty of promise, 

" that which sets 
The budding rose above the rose full blown." 

The realization of ideal promise is not merely in- 
tellectual power and practical attainment. A man 
may have these, and yet lack a rich mind. Sym- 
pathy, pure ideals, morality, religious sentiment 
belong to a complete nature. Without them one is 
not a fit leader or a choice companion. A wholly 
irreligious man is not conscious of his soul. As 
the years advance, with the progressive man there 
is more heart, more simplicity and truth, more 
moral and spiritual interest. 

In the " Memoir of Lord Tennyson " by his son, 
a chapter on the '' In Memoriam " throws brilliant 
side lights on the essential character of the great 
poet. One would almost take the truths there ex- 
pressed as his creed, and the inner life there revealed 
as the consummation of a personal ideal. We note 
his " splendid faith in the growing purpose of the 
sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the individ- 
ual man ; " his belief that 'Mt is the great purpose 
which consecrates life ;" his feeling that " only under 
the inspiration of ideals, and with his * sword bathed 
in heaven,' can a man combat the cynical indiffer- 
ence, the intellectual selfishness, the sloth of will, 
the utilitarian materialism of a transition age;" his 
faith that " the truth must be larger, purer, nobler 
than any mere human expression of it;" hisafifirma- 
tion that, if you " take away belief in the self-con- 
scious personality of God, you take away the back- 
bone of the world." He believed in prayer. In 



igS EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

his own words: " Prayer is like opening a sluice be- 
tween the great ocean and our little channels when 
the great sea gathers itself together and flows in at 
full tide." 

Ideals do not belong to a mystical realm, to a re- 
mote age or to an indefinite future. They are not 
the exclusive possession of sage, saint, or poet. 
They belong to this day, here, to us. They belong 
to the professional man, as a man, as much as to the 
man of liberal culture. 

To see the idyllic in what is familiar, to realize 
the heroic in ourselves, to make the lessons of great- 
ness our own, to work with the spirit of our time 
are the means of growth. Every thought and every 
act, flowing from the conscious will, fashion the soul. 

" I held it truth, with him who sings 
To one clear harp in divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things." 



THE GREEK VIRTUES IN MODERN 
APPLICATION. 

At the risk of imitating the severe logical dis- 
courses which proceed at least as far as fifthly, let 
us enumerate some essential conditions that by the 
agreement of thoughtful men are requisite for a sat- 
isfactory life: (i) a sound body ; (2) courage ; (3) 
intellectual ideals ; (4) moral ideals ; (5) reverence. 
While these elements are selected for their intrinsic 
value, without reference to the history of ethical 
thought, the discovery that they show more than 
a fancied similarity to the ancient and the early 
Christian ideals strengthens our belief in their 
value, and suggests that essential human standards 
are not for one people or one age, but for all peoples 
and all time, and that they are spontaneously rec- 
ognized even in an age like ours, when men readily 
turn toward utilitarian ends. 

If we go back to the dawn of philosophic thought 
and listen to the early revelators of the nature of 
man and his relation to the world and society — con- 
verse with Plato in the groves of Academus, or walk 
with Aristotle in the shady avenues of the Lyceum 
— we find them proclaiming the great truths which 
have been confirmed by the experience of ages, and 
urging upon men Moderation, Courage, Wisdom, 
Justice, and the Good, or God, as aim. If we cross 
over from the ancient world to the Christian Empire, 



200 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

where old ethical thought was already taking on 
deeper meaning, broader application, and richer life, 
we find in the Cardinal Virtues of St. Ambrose and 
St. Augustine a new and vitalized form of the Greek 
Virtues : Temperance, Christian Fortitude, Chris- 
tian Wisdom, Christian Justice, God as aim. If we 
come down to modern times, and catch the spirit of 
ideals that still dwell among the people, we find that 
human nature is everywhere the same, and that the 
experience of human life in all ages discovers through 
the organization of society the same divine principles 
— laws to be reverenced and obeyed, to be followed 
as practical guides to success. 

Modern psychology has rendered a service of 
far-reaching practical benefit in showing more defi- 
nitely the intimate connection between the brain 
and mental action. In this connection of body 
and soul the two are correlated ; the brain is or- 
ganic to the functions of the soul. The health of 
the brain is largely dependent upon general phys- 
ical conditions, and the old apothegm, ''Mens sana 
in corpore sano^'' is interpreted with a new meaning 
not fully known in the days of Juvenal. Maxims 
of health, sifted by the experience of ages, trans- 
mitted from generation to generation, and confirmed 
by the proofs of modern science, are wisdom of in- 
estimable value for our instruction. He who wastes 
energy of the body wastes vigor and duration of 
mental power. Rev. William R. Alger used to say : 

Keep yourself at highest working capacity by pre- 
serving the vigor of the body." The various ways 
of wasting physical energy are susceptible of classi- 
fication, and it is well worth the while to make a 



GREEK VIRTUES IN MODERN APPLICATION. 20I 

thoughtful analysis of the subject. We admire the 
firm step, erect bearing, clear eye, and bright brain 
that belong to healthful habits and noble manhood. 
Many a man by carefully conserving the vital forces 
will outlive and outdo others who, with stronger 
bodies, waste their energy. 

Physical sins react upon the mind and debase 
character. They are signs of a character already 
weak, and the interaction between mind and body 
doubly hastens the relaxing of just restraint. The 
ancient virtue of moderation, or temperance, meant 
more than temperate habit ; it meant the submis- 
sion of animal unreason to reason — the " observ- 
ance of due measure in all conduct." 

In accord with the maxims of health are the 
Greek Virtue of Moderation, the Cardinal Virtue of 
Temperance, the Hebrew Purity. Regard for these 
maxims is an important condition of success. 

Courage appears in the Greek Category as heart 
for energetic action, and in the Cardinal Virtues as 
firmness for the right and against the wrong. Cour- 
age is the sine qua non of success. The student 
must have courage to overcome his inertia. A ven- 
erable professor of my college days used to say : 
" Every young man is naturally as lazy as he can be, 
and the greatest problem of education is to gain an 
energetic will." Courage is required to undertake 
an enterprise demanding long years of toil. A vol- 
ume recently published contains the early experience 
of celebrated authors now living, and nearly every 
one owes his success to a persevering determination, 
in spite of poverty, rebuffs, criticism, and repeated 
failures. Their genius lies in their courage. We 



202 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

need the courage of our convictions to stand by the 
right. The great reformers have shared this kind of 
confidence of soul. Nearly all of Carlyle's types of 
the world's great heroes possessed it to an almost 
sublime degree, and, most of all, the hero of the Ref- 
ormation. Waiving all religious controversies that 
centre about the doctrines of Martin Luther, he is 
a figure for the world to admire. Some of his 
memorable words are known as household words, 
but, like strains of familiar grand music, are ever 
grateful — they lose nothing by repeating. When 
warned that Duke George of Leipzig was his enemy 
he said : " Had I business, I would ride into Leipzig 
though it rained Duke Georges for nine days run- 
ning." When summoned to the Diet at Worms, 
he answered the friends who would dissuade him : 
** Were there as many devils in Worms as there are 
roof tiles, I would on." When urged in the pres- 
ence of that august council to recant, he replied : 
" Here I stand; I can do no other; God help me." 
And the courage of his religious faith rose to its 
climax when he boldly faced the supernatural and 
hurled his inkstand at the head of the Devil himself. 
The student needs the courage of faith in his own 
powers and possibilities. Many a one fails because 
he has not confidence in himself. In rare moments 
of meditation one sometimes discovers capacities 
and possibilities of attainment that become a life 
inspiration. 

We are proud of our Teutonic ancestry; of the 
bold enterprise that led the Teutons across Europe in 
conquest, or impelled them to embark in their gal- 
leys and push forth with adventurous spirit, and 
fearlessly ride the tempestuous waves, as their oars 



GREEK VIRTUES IN MODERN APPLICATION. 



203 



kept time to the music of their songs of victory. 
Their courageous and progressive spirit, tamed and 
refined, reappeared in the religious convictions of 
the Puritans, in the settlement of America, in the 
westward march of civilization in our own country, 
in the confidence of the pioneers that early crossed 
the plains and pitched their tents by these mighty 
mountains, in the energy that has made all that the 
world holds as greatest and best in material civiliza- 
tion, invention, government, science, literature, and 
moral and religious principle. The young man who 
has in his veins the blood of this people, and inher- 
its the blessings that his race has wrought out, is a 
recreant to his trust if he does not stand courage- 
ously for all that is best in his own development, 
and all that is best in the progress of his age. Thor, 
the Norse god, possessed a belt of strength by 
which his might was doubled, and a precious ham- 
mer which when thrown returned to the hand of its 
own accord. When he wielded the hammer, as the 
Northern legends relate, he grasped it until the 
knuckles grew white. This hammer is an heirloom 
of the Northern races, handed down from the Halls 
of Walhalla. And herein lies the secret of success: 
grasp the hammer until the knuckles grow white. 

Plato held Wisdom to be the supreme means 
by which to attain the great purpose of human ex- 
istence. The Cardinal Virtue of Christian Wisdom 
is to gain knowledge of God. Plato conceived growth 
in wisdom to be a gradual realization, in the con- 
sciousness of man, of the eternal ideas. Man came 
from heaven and in his progress in knowledge he was 
but climbing the upward path to regain his lost estate. 



204 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



The exercise of wisdom marked him off from the 
lower order of beings, and he was fulfilling the dis- 
tinctively human function only when living a rational 
life. 

If nature is a congeries of metaphors arranged in 
a system of relations and constituting a sublime 
allegory, and we, being the offspring of God, may 
interpret this allegory and thereby come to a con- 
sciousness of verities, if there is a spiritual sense that 
may feel the presence of great truths and of a personal 
God — then man pursues his supreme calling when 
through the laws of physical nature, when through 
the beauty of its forms, when through knowledge of 
self, when through the world's history and literature 
and philosophy he aims at a further acquaintance 
with truth. If knowledge and the power that comes 
through knowledge enhance our material civilization 
and make more favorable conditions for the body and 
more leisure for the mind and more refinement for 
the spirit, if to create material things brings us more 
in accord with the creative spirit of the universe, 
then we have the highest incentives to gain knowl- 
edge toward so-called practical ends. 

The universities are not always the first discov- 
erers of wisdom, but they are the storehouses of the 
wisdom of the ages, and the distributing points. 
They are not a substitute for nature and real life, 
but they help to interpret both. They are not a 
substitute for practical experience, but they bestow 
the instruments with which to do better the work of 
practical experience. They do not create power, 
but they develop power. 

A few geniuses have in strong degree the intel- 
lectual impulse and follow it until they become 



GREEK VIRTUES IN MODERN APPLICATION. 



205 



original and creative, and contribute to the world's 
insight. But the average youth needs all that the 
formal training of the schools can give him. When 
the student is once aroused by the sense of his priv- 
ileges and duties, he will select no easy goal to attain. 
He will not be satisfied until he has learned the 
secrets of nature's processes, has examined his own 
nature, has made use of the recorded experience of 
the ages — thereby taking a giant stride in knowledge 
that he could not have taken alone — has given him- 
self the power to help in the work of his own time. 

Justice was regarded by Plato as the ground of 
social uprightness ; Christian justice recognized the 
brotherhood of man, with all that follows in moral 
conduct; ** moral ideals " for us has the same signi- 
ficance. This is not the place for the discussion of 
ethical theories, but it is of the highest importance 
for the young man, after wandering more or less 
vaguely over the field of ethical doctrines, to turn 
to the nature of his own being and find there writ- 
ten the supreme fact of moral obligation, with its 
implications of freedom of will, a personal God, and 
immortality of the soul. 

Every man knows that even in his ordinary ap- 
provable acts he does not work to the end of pleas- 
ure, but that he has impulses that reach out in 
fellowship and compassion toward others, impulses 
that reach out toward the Truth and Beauty and 
Supreme Goodness of the world. Every man knows 
that he possesses a power to choose amongst and 
regulate his impulses; that such aims are to be 
employed as will conduce to the perfection of his 
being and of all human being; that his reward lies 



2o6 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

in this perfection, in a noble and approvable charac- 
ter, which is not to be completed in this life, but is 
to attain its full realization in a future life. And 
hence is revealed to him the rational necessity of 
that life, without which the present struggle and 
growth would lack meaning. 

If there is moral order in the universe, then man 
will be successful as he conforms to that order. If 
he goes against the great silent forces moving in the 
direction of Right, his life can but result in failure. 
Men who show a disregard for moral law are held 
to possess a dangerous malady slowly decaying the 
tissues of the soul. They are treated with suspi- 
cion in business relations and condemned in the 
minds of others and by their own judgment. Sound 
to the core must a man be who would make the 
most of life and receive the approval which the world 
bestows upon character. 

A true man is bold ; he feels that for him all the 
forces of right will contend. He has courage for his 
work, because he knows he is on the right path and 
is moving toward ever higher attainments and a 
supreme result. 

The subject is old as man, the thoughts are trite; 
why not utter your maxim and proceed, or rather 
say nothing ? While there are lives empty of pur- 
pose and hearts that bleed in contrition and trag- 
edies that fill prisons and madhouses, there is much 
to say and more to do. Have we no further use for 
wisdom ? Have we ceased to erect perennial mon- 
uments to the memory of saints and reformers ? 
If the subject is old, the generations of men are 
new, and the race has not attained its perfection. 
The best men and the best thoughts reveal us to 



GREEK VIRTUES IN MODERN APPLICATION, 



207 



ourselves, are the source of our aspiration ; and we 
of the present, not half-way toward the goal, have 
need of our Socrates, Augustine, Luther, and su- 
premely of the divine Christ. We still have need of 
our Pilgrim's Progress. 

The aim of Plato's philosophy was the Supreme 
Good, or God. The Cardinal Virtues were framed 
in the light of religious faith. Reverence is the 
sentiment whose object is God. Says the Sage of 
Chelsea: " All that we do springs out of Mystery, 
Spirit, invisible Force." Some, well-versed in 
Spencer's works, have failed to note this passage: 
" One truth must grow ever clearer — the truth that 
there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere mani- 
fested, to which the man of science can neither 
find nor conceive either beginning or end. Amid 
the mysteries which become the more mysterious the 
more they are thought about there will remain the 
one absolute certainty, that he is ever in the pres- 
ence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which 
all things proceed." Add to this the Faith which 
is the " substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
of things not seen," and you have the origin of all 
religions, of all temples of worship. It is the con- 
ception of the philosopher and the insight of the 
poet ; it is held most strongly by the most pro- 
found. Few great men, though they may reject 
formal creeds, are without the feeling of Reverence. 
Carlyle's " Everlasting Yea " is the vision of a true 
seer, and it reveals, in the spontaneous language of 
earnest thought, the breadth and depth of a possible 
Christian experience. He speaks through the hero 
of the " Sartor Resartus." By disappointment and 



2o8 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

dim faith the universe had become to him a vast 
merciless machine ; he was filled with an indefinable 
fear. But over his soul came the spirit of Indigna- 
tion and Defiance, and he shook off fear of all that 
is evil, and all that may happen of evil. In his 
words: " The Everlasting No had said: 'Behold, 
thou art fatherless, outcast ; and the Universe is 
mine (the Devil's) ' ; to which my whole Me now 
made answer: ' I am not thine, but Free, and for- 
ever hate thee!' " This is but the first step, and 
only by the " Annihilation of Self " does he awake 
to a " new Heaven and a new Earth." Now nature 
is seen to be the ** Living Garment of God." The 
Universe is no longer " dead and demoniacal," but 
" godlike and his Father's." He looks upon his 
fellow man with an ' * infinite Love, an infinite Pity, 
and enters the porch of the *' Sanctuary of Sorrow." 
Happiness is no longer the aim ; happiness cannot 
be satisfied. " There is in man a Higher than Love 
of Happiness; he can do without Happiness, and 
instead thereof find Blessedness!" "Love not 
pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING 
Yea." The Temple of Sorrow (the Christian Tem- 
ple) is partly in ruins, but in a crypt the sacred lamp 
still burns for him, and for all. Applied Christian- 
ity is action. He says: " Do the Duty which lies 
nearest thee: thy second Duty will already have 
become clearer." Thy opportunity is in whatever 
thy condition now and here offers thee. ** Whatso- 
ever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole 
might." Christianity " flows through all our hearts 
and modulates and divinely leads them." Of im- 
mortality he says: " Know of a truth that only the 
Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable; 



GREEK VIRTUES IN MODERN APPLICATION. 



209 



that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever 
is, and whatever will be, is even now and forever. 
Believe it thou must; understand it thou 
canst not." 

If we may draw a lesson from this, Carlyle's 
greatest work, it is that the completeness of life re- 
quires vivifying, hope-giving, sin-subduing, cour- 
age-inspiring faith and reverence. To the hero of 
Carlyle's prose poem success did not come, until the 
" Fire-Baptism " of his soul. He confesses: " I di- 
rectly thereupon began to be a man." 

Are these ideals of value for practical success ? 
Yes, for all the success worth striving for and worth 
having. Does not craft succeed better than hon- 
esty ? Sometimes, and for a time, but honesty 
appears to be even the best policy, and it is the 
essential stamp of real manhood and womanhood. 
The genuine heroes of all history are the morally 
great. Are not such standards too high — imprac- 
tical ideals for the pulpit and platform, which no 
one is expected to carry into real life ? No one at- 
tains even his own ideals, much less the absolute 
standards ; but they are the steady aim of a fully 
successful life. 

If a young man is true to himself, the bounties of 
nature, the good will of others, the cooperation of 
the forces of right, and the approval of God are his. 
The world waits to see what he will do with his 
powers and opportunities. Much is expected of 
him, and rightly. The state which has helped edu- 
cate him expects much ; the home which has made 
sacrifices for him expects much. Will he have the 
courage to stand by his ideals ? To progress must 
14 



2IO EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

be part of his religion. When the oak has ceased 
to put forth its leaves and extend its branches, it 
has gone into hopeless decay. There is no lasting 
happiness but in action and ever new and higher 
realizations. 

Longfellow represents early manhood turning re- 
gretfully from the memory visions of childhood and 
youth to the earnest work of life. 

" Visions of childhood ! Stay, O stay ! 

Ye were so sweet and wild ! 

And distant voices seem to say, 

It cannot be ! They pass away ! 

Other themes demand thy lay ; 

Thou art no more a child ! 

" The land of Song within thee lies, 

Watered by living springs ; 
The lids of Fancy's sleepless eyes 
Are gates unto that Paradise, 
Holy thoughts, like stars, arise. 

Its clouds are angel's wings. 



" Look, then, into thine heart, and write ! 

Yes, into Life's deep stream ! 
All forms of sorrow and delight. 
All solemn Voices of the Night, 
That can soothe thee, or affright, — 

Be these henceforth thy theme." 



THE STUDENT AS CITIZEN. 

Solomon, in the fulness of his wisdom and the 
maturity of his moral strength, wrote Proverbs. In 
the third chapter are many appeals in behalf of 
ideal manhood, and in behalf of justice and mercy in 
relations with one's fellow men. He exhorts men 
to depart from evil and hold fast to truth. He 
instructs them that intellectual and moral wisdom is 
better than silver and gold and rubies ; that it gives 
long life, riches, power, and peace of mind. The 
wise shall find favor in sight of God and man. Rev- 
erence for God contributes to worldly success and 
the growth of character. With equal force he 
teaches regard for the rights and the welfare of 
others. " Devise not evil against thy neighbor." 
" Strive not with a man without a cause." ** Choose 
not the ways of the oppressor." " Withhold not 
good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the 
power of thine hand to do it." And he sums up 
the whole matter in the sentence: " God blesseth 
the habitation of the just." 

Men sometimes question whether ideals and Uto- 
pias have any practical value. Note the words of 
Professor Jowett, penned after he had spent years 
of his intense life in translating and commenting 
upon the Dialogues of Plato — writings which, in 
broad outlines, represent the best ideals of all phi- 
losophy for the individual and for society. He says : 



212 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

" Human life and conduct are affected by ideals in 
the same way that they are affected by the exam- 
ples of eminent men. Neither the one nor the other 
is immediately applicable to practice, but there is a 
virtue flowing from them which tends to raise indi- 
viduals above the common routine of society or 
trade, and to elevate states above the mere interests 
of commerce or the necessities of self-defense. Most 
men live in a corner, and see but a little way beyond 
their own home or place or occupation; they * do 
not lift up their eyes to the hills ; ' they are not 
awake when the dawn appears. But in Plato, as 
from some * tower of speculation,* we look into the 
distance and behold the future of the world and of 
philosophy. The ideal of the state and of the life 
of the philosopher; the ideal of an education con- 
tinuing through life and extending equally to both 
sexes; the ideal of the unity and correlation of 
knowledge; the faith in good and immortality — are 
the vacant forms of light on which Plato is seeking 
to fix the eye of mankind." 

In Plato's Ideal Republic the ruler is to be a 
man of wisdom and probity, and is to consider only 
the good of his subjects. " Until political great- 
ness and wisdom meet in one, cities never will cease 
from ill." The citizen must perfect his calling, 
however humble, as an artist perfects his art, and 
must form a harmonious and useful factor in the 
state. States must be organized on the " heav- 
enly," that is, the ideal, pattern. After developing 
the understanding of justice through the ten books 
of the " Republic," Socrates concludes: " Need we 
hire a herald, or shall I proclaim the result — that 
the best and the justest man is also the happiest. 



THE STUDENT AS CITIZEN, 



213 



and that this is he who is the most royal master of 
himself; and that the worst and most unjust man 
is also the most miserable, and that this is he who 
is the greatest tyrant of himself and of his state." 

The good citizen is described in Plato's " Laws " 
as he who honors his own soul, obeys the laws, 
meets the just demands of the state with endur- 
ance; who holds virtue above all other good, 
teaches children reverence, instead of bestowing 
upon them riches ; who sets a good example, holds 
a contract as sacred, aids the suffering; who is 
trusted because of his truthfulness, does no injus- 
tice, exerts good influences, is ambitious without 
envy; who is gentle, forgives the penitent, loves not 
self unduly; who is cheerful and hopeful in misfor- 
tune ; who is wise and moderate, and courageous 
in spirit. 

Thus the wisdom of the Greek confirms the wis- 
dom of the Hebrew, and, were we to trace the Chris- 
tian teachings that constitute the true spirit of our 
modern civilization, we should find these same 
maxims, wrought out with fuller understanding, 
given a richer content and a broader application. 
The good citizen is he who is true to his best 
nature, and toward others is just, truthful, merciful, 
and helpful. It requires no new philosophy to solve 
the problems of society, only a better grasp and use 
of the old ; for the germs of essential truths are as 
old as man, and have their origin in the mind of the 
Creator, who made this a moral world. 

Each man, as a part of the universe, is subject to 
the universal will of God revealed in him ; he, 
though a free agent, is under universal law, binding 



14 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



Upon him as sharing in the common brotherhood. 
Did a different universe walk under your hat and 
under mine, then there would be no society, no 
brotherhood, no individual growth; so far as a man 
isolates himself in selfishness and narrowness, he is 
detached from the source and life of his being, and 
perishes by himself. He remains undeveloped, be- 
cause the soul comes to know itself only by reflec- 
tion in the mirror of kindred natures. The state is 
the organization that brings men into the most fa- 
vorable conditions for the interplay of mind upon 
mind and heart upon heart. 

As a part of the whole, each man must have his 
vocation. Man is conditioned by the needs of his 
physical being. He is compelled to make requisi- 
tion on the fruitfulness of the earth, the abundance 
of the sea, and all the forces of nature. This de- 
mand upon his energies develops his intelligence and 
creative power. By serving his own needs he also 
serves others and contributes to a material civiliza- 
tion favorable to soul growth. The most favorable 
material conditions, however, are only the scene for 
the play of spiritual forces, and on this scene some 
find their special vocation in arousing and guiding 
mental and moral activities. He who, being able, 
does not contribute by his vocation to the common 
good, is a drain upon the whole; he takes without 
giving, and has no just share in the products of 
earth, the protection of state, or the favor of the 
Universal Father. 

The ideal scholar is a man of rich thought and 
feeling, one who has realized much of his possi- 
bility, has come to a consciousness of universal 



THE STUDENT AS CITIZEN. 



215 



truths. He has variety, breadth, and definiteness of 
knowledge, and, hence, is able more wisely to play 
his part in the state. He is the conservator and 
transmitter of the thought of the ages. From his 
acquaintance with the past he may interpret the 
present. By his own activity and invention he may 
add to the store of wisdom and the progress of civili- 
zation. He is able to view broadly the field of knowl- 
edge. He should judge wisely of events, and be able 
to sift useless details from essential truths. Upon 
him rests the responsibility of having many talents 
committed to his charge ; he must gain other talents. 
But this educated power is not to be merely self- 
centred. In these days no man is privileged to 
live an unproductive life. The development of his 
nature and the enjoyment of his powers is every 
man's right; but mere serene pleasure in exalted 
thought and feeling, as sought by the mediaeval 
recluse, in an age when ideals must be followed by 
action, when utility is yoked to philosophy, is no 
longer tolerable in scholar or saint. The world de- 
mands the best expression of every man's best abil- 
ity. The educated man should be a man of action 
and influence. If he chooses literature, he must give 
mankind the result of his deepest insight. If he 
chooses science, he enters a vast field, and the world 
expects of the trained specialist some fresh contri- 
bution to knowledge or skillful application in using 
the forces of nature. If he chooses teaching, he 
holds his only valid commission from the wise men 
of all ages. He is a mediator between the whole 
world of intellectual and moral wisdom and the 
needs of the plastic mind, and he is in large degree 
responsible for the shape it assumes and its beauty 



2i6 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

and worth. Young minds will reflect the richness 
or poverty of the thought, feeling, and life of the 
teacher. College-trained educators have a greater 
responsibility in proportion to their superior advan- 
tages. In whatever field, the educated man must 
use his trained powers for the honor of his calling. 

The world has special claims upon the learned 
professions. The client pays for the honest service 
of the advocate, and, to the full limit of the justice 
involved, he may demand the best effort of his pa- 
tron. The graduate in medicine has a mission, not 
alone of drugs and instruments, but of ministering 
to the mind diseased. His relations call for the 
soul of honor and delicacy and secrecy.. The nature 
of his profession requires the most devoted service. 

This demand for unselfish public service from the 
educated has not merely an objective significance. 
A man's full growth is, in a large measure, dependent 
upon the effective outward expression of his better 
self. Man finds his well-being in regard for the well- 
being of others. 

There are times when the popular clamor of those 
who see only the near event must be resisted by the 
steady courage of citizens of far-reaching vision. 
One such man may see a truth more clearly than a 
thousand of average judgment. Plato surpassed 
the race in discovery of the foundations of truth. 
Copernicus penetrated to the centre of the solar 
system, and, there taking his stand, all the orbs 
moved before him in harmony. Such a standpoint, 
amid all the complexities of affairs, is always to be 
sought by men of deep discernment. 

He who is educated by society or by the state 



THE STUDENT AS CITIZEN. 



217 



stands under a peculiar obligation. The state 
says : I offer you as your right the best opportuni- 
ties for your development ; I provide for the acqui- 
sition of professional and mechanical skill. As a 
human being, for whom I am responsible, you have 
a claim to these privileges ; but I give them also 
for the further welfare and progress of the whole, 
and I demand that you use your opportunities ap- 
preciatively and wisely. I expect you to conserve 
your physical being, to develop your powers, to 
train your mind for service and your heart to regard 
the claims of society. I expect no dwarfed and dis- 
torted growth, but a growth that has expanded in 
normal beauty and strength. The state has trained 
you that you may be an active factor for the welfare 
and glory of the state — a factor that shall consider 
the state's problems, shall take part in political 
affairs, shall occupy honestly positions of responsi- 
bility, shall stand for the right and raise its voice 
vigorously for every just cause, shall impart of its 
knowledge and professional skill in proportion to 
the full measure that has been received. Good to 
the state is the state's due; withhold not that good 
when it is in the power of your hand to do it. If 
your power is used selfishly, if your cunning is turned 
to the harm of your foster mother, if your influence 
leads men aside from the path of moral progress, I 
disown you as unworthy and ungrateful, and uncon- 
scious of your obligations as a man and a citizen. 

The name of a country stands for more than its 
territory, people, and government. It represents the 
principles and conditions that gave it birth, the 
battles in defence of its integrity and honor, the 
civil conflicts for the triumph of the best elements, 



2i8 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

the monuments to the loyalty and sacrifice of its 
founders, defenders, and preservers. It represents 
the glory of its heroes, statesmen, poets, and seers ; 
it stands for the peculiar genius and mission of the 
people. It is a heritage whose glory is to be main- 
tained by the character, wisdom, and devotion of all 
its citizens. 

I do not take the pessimistic view of political life. 
Men in places of responsibility are more disposed 
toward the right than is allowed by their political 
opponents. Respect is due to our rulers, and a man 
is not to be charged with wrong motives merely be- 
cause his judgment is not in accord with ours, be- 
cause the affairs of state or municipality are not 
perfectly administered, nor because of the exigen- 
cies of party. 

That there is much to condemn in political con- 
duct is also true, and corruption, whether in the 
primaries or the Presidency, is most potent in weak- 
ening the integrity of ambitious young men. The 
best influences of church and school hardly serve to 
offset the tendency of daily contact with men who 
have no ideal standards of citizenship. The idea of 
public gain without commensurate public service is 
a most insidious tempter, to be resisted by every 
instinct of true manhood. This is not a matter of 
abstract speculation, but a practical condition here 
and now, and one that every educated man must 
face. 

You recall the scene of Shakespeare, where Hot- 
spur on the field of battle, " breathless and weary " 
after the conflict, encountered a certain lord, " per- 
fumed like a milliner," holding to his nose a pouncet- 



THE STUDENT AS CITIZEN. 



219 



box, and calling the soldiers, who bore the dead 
bodies by, untaught knaves, " to bring a slovenly, 
unhandsome corse betwixt the wind and his nobil- 
ity. " Hotspur adds: " It made me mad to see 
him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, . . . and 
tell me but for these vile guns, he would himself 
have been a soldier." I mean no undue disrespect 
to educated and refined gentlemen who stand aloof 
from the political field because it smells of " villain- 
ous saltpetre," and is altogether too dirty and dan- 
gerous for their respectability and ease. The intel- 
ligence of the nation should guide the nation, and 
any educated man who stands by and views with 
indifference or timidity the struggle for the triumph 
of the best elements of society and the best princi- 
ples, deserves the objurgations of every valiant 
Hotspur in the land. A minister recently said: 
** It is as much your duty to attend the primaries as 
the prayer-meeting." I would have educated young 
men take a hand in every contest where order and 
justice and honesty are endangered ; I would have 
them independently take a stand with whatever 
party or faction, at a given time, may represent the 
best cause. I would have them measure public ser- 
vice and public reward by the strict standard of 
equity ; I would have them recognize the duty of 
active practical citizenship. 

The people are keen to detect wrong aims in po- 
litical life, and in their minds they speedily relegate 
the politician who shows himself unworthy to the 
plane of his motives. They as speedily recognize 
probity and patriotism and devotion to the common- 
wealth, and the truly royal men in public life are 
enshrined in their hearts and are made an example 



220 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

to their children. The majority of citizens are right 
in their feeling and purpose; their fault is in their 
apathy. Edgar W. Nye, the genial humorist, 
quaintly expressed a deep thought when he said : 
" To-day there is not a crowned head on the conti- 
nent of Europe that does not recognize this great 
truth — viz. : that God alone, speaking through the 
united voices of the common people, declares the 
rulings of the Supreme Court of the Universe." In 
the long run the voice of all the people is just. 

In the sixteenth century literature we find a choice 
bit of truth and eloquence: " Of Law there can be 
no less acknowledged than that her seat is the 
Bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the 
world." Moral order is a part of the beneficent 
law of the world ; only by conformity to it can an 
individual or a nation prosper. If ideals of truth 
and right are existent in the mind of the Creator, 
are implanted in human nature and revealed through 
society, no one can escape from their authority. 
One of the old Sophists declared honesty to be 
" sublime simplicity," and those are yet found who 
subscribe to the creed. The life that is controlled 
by mere prudence is likely at some time to commit 
a fatal error. That State is sound that lives under 
the law of God, that regards principles of right and 
maintains healthy sentiment. 



OPTIMISM AND INTEREST. 

Not long ago I met an old acquaintance, and by- 
way of greeting asked how affairs were with him. 
" All right," he replied; " business is looking up; 
the city is improving; the State is in a better condi- 
tion; we have a good Legislature, a good Governor; 
it is a beautiful day, a beautiful world ; everything 
is all right." And I went on my way, meditating 
on interest and optimism. His interest in life was 
not due to any recent stroke of good fortune, but 
was habitual. 

The optimist is your best philosopher. He adapts 
himself to the world and uses it. He selects the 
best that life offers, and, when the sky is gloomy, 
he lives in hope of bright days. He has faith in the 
ultimate beneficent outcome of the plan of the Cre- 
ator. As there is light for the eye, sound for the ear, 
form for the touch, aromas for the smell, food for 
the taste, so there is an object in the outer world, 
adapted to every human instinct and impulse. The 
impulse for life and action, the desire for property, 
the impulse for friendship, the impulses of wonder, 
aesthetic admiration, and religious worship — each has 
its objective counterpart. Man is adjusted to his en- 
vironment, and his environment includes the whole 
round world of utility and sentiment. Human life 
is perpetual activity, a searching for objects that 
will meet material needs and conduce to spiritual 



222 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

development. The feeling of interest arises when 
the mind finds the object of its search or feels that 
it is on the right track. 

Interest is the condition of the mind that makes 
a thing of value to us. It is the cry of Eureka when 
a fitting discovery is made. It is the magnetic rela- 
tion between impulse and the end at which it aims, 
between man and the outer world, between man 
and himself. It makes life worth living, and is the 
secret of activity and progress. Inasmuch as inter- 
est shows the kind of objects that appeal to the 
mind, it is a revelation of character. 

The objects which a man may cherish are limit- 
less. He may rejoice in his strength, his personal 
adornment, his lands and money, his books and 
works of art. He may find an eager interest in his 
own image as pictured in the minds of his relatives, 
friends, or fellow citizens. He may take pride in 
family or in personal glory and honor. Men pose 
before the world ; they act often with reference to 
the appreciation they will receive. It is told that 
the poet Keats could not live without applause. 
Carlyle says men write history, not with supreme 
regard for facts, but for the writing. Nero con- 
ceived that he was a musician, poet, and actor, 
surpassing in merit the geniuses of his age. 

Man's attitude toward wisdom and religion, the 
quality of his thoughts and feelings, his aspirations, 
constitute his spiritual interest. The sentiments of 
his soul are his; for them he is responsible, and in 
them he finds satisfaction or humiliation. 

As one forgets self and self-interest, more and 
more he makes the whole world his possession. 



OPTIMISM AND INTEREST. 



223 



Nature, the welfare of others, man in history and 
literature, the Maker of all, may become objects of 
regard. A French nobleman who in the vicissi- 
tudes of revolution lost his estates and titles, but 
received a small pension from the government, 
became a philosopher and had the world at his com- 
mand. For slight pay, willing service for his daily 
needs was his; private gardens, public parks, the 
broad landscape, the sky were his to enjoy, and he 
was free from care and fear. Some interests are 
universal, not the heritage and possession of one, 
but, like sun and air, free. They fall " as the gentle 
rain from heaven upon the place beneath," and bless 
him that receives. Rich in experience is he who 
can see in the drifted gleaming snows on our moun- 
tain peaks more than the summer's irrigation, in the 
green plains of May more than the growing crops of 
wheat and alfalfa, in the orchard bloom more than 
the promise of fruit, in public education and charity 
more than political and social prudence, in religious 
devotion more than conventionality. For him 
blessings come on the morning breeze, gleam from 
the midnight sky, appear in the quality of mercy, 
and spring from communion with the Soul of Nature. 

Prometheus is said to have given to men a portion 
of all the qualities possessed by the other animals 
— the lion, the monkey, the wolf — hence the many 
traits that are manifest in his complex nature. 
There is a slight suggestion of evolution in this — 
that man is but the highest stage of animal develop- 
ment, and that his refined emotions are but the 
instincts of the lower orders modified by complex 
groupings. We grant the process, but not necessa- 



224 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



rily the inference. An apple is none the less an 
apple because it is the product of an unbroken de- 
velopment from a germ and simple shoot. The 
spirit of self-sacrifice need be none the less valid 
because it is a late phase of some simple instinct. 
We believe the world was fashioned according to an 
intelligent plan, a plan gradually realized, and that 
its meaning is found, not in the lower, but in the 
higher stages of development. We explain the pur- 
pose of creation, not by the first struggle of a pro- 
tozoan for food, but by the last aspiration of man 
for heaven. 

" From harmony, from heavenly harmony, 
This universal frame began : 
From harmony to harmony 
Through all the compass of the notes it ran, 
The diapason closing full in Man." 

The latest science hesitates to question the valid- 
ity of our higher emotional life. It is becoming 
antiquated to say that, because we are descended 
from animals, our sense of duty, our feelings of faith 
and reverence have no more significance than the 
animal instincts from which they may have devel- 
oped. There they are in all their refinement, need, 
and suggestiveness, and, as such, are a proper ground 
of belief. A late philosophical evolutionist says it 
is useless to theorize about our impulse to pray, its 
use or futility — we pray because we cannot help 
praying. Evolution is undergoing the test of the 
last stage of a scientific process — in this instance 
that of fitness to explain the facts of man's nature. 
It may not escape the test by denying the facts. 

Pardon the seeming digression, but the reasonable- 
ness of our faith is the ground of interest. Interest 



OPTIMISM AND INTEREST. 



225 



vanishes with the genuineness of our supposed 
treasure. We do not Hke to handle counterfeit 
coin; we do not value antiquities and sacred relics 
of modern manufacture, or mementos that no longer 
represent cherished memories. Much that stimu- 
lates the higher life would perish did we doubt the 
truth of our nature; the glory of the world would 
depart were the soul lost out of it. 

Some interests have sacred claims above others ; 
there is a hierarchy amongst our impulses. Analyze 
the fact as we way, duty still remains. Moral laws 
and their practical application are progressively re- 
vealed by the relations of men in society. We may 
believe the laws are there in the nature of things, 
but that our discovery of them is gradual, as is the 
discovery of the unchanging laws of physics. The 
moral problem is the old one of the struggle between 
light and darkness, between good and evil, between 
duty and pleasure — the problem of responsibility, 
character, and destiny. In its modern form it is the 
problem of utility, that is, of life and happiness. 
But utilitarianism includes, and ever must include, 
the happiness that comes from the exercise of the 
higher spiritual functions, from the sense of duty 
performed, and from belief in divine approbation. 

Interests chosen and pursued reveal the character. 
Men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of 
thistles. " A good tree can not bring forth evil 
fruit ; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good 
fruit." The outward act is but the visible expres- 
sion of the inner life. 

There is something more than a pleasing myth in 
the Greek conception of choosing the lot of life, 

15 



226 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

Every responsible act of free will is gradually fixing 
our destiny. The conduct of life is not a series of 
skirmishes with fate; it is fate itself, and a thing 
largely of our own creation. We are constructing 
the future out of the present. For the goal that we 
may finally reach we are even now running the race, 
the direction is already chosen, and, if we find our- 
selves on the wrong road, time is already lost. 

Times change, science brings in new conceptions, 
superstitions vanish, beliefs are modified, new con- 
ditions and duties arise. But as the scenes shift and 
new actors come on the stage, the themes are still 
human history, comedy, and tragedy. The argu- 
ment of the play is still the triumph of heroism and 
the reward of virtue. The spectators still smile at 
innocent pleasures, weep with misfortune, and ap- 
plaud sentiment and worth, and the orchestra still 
plays the triumph or the dirge as the curtain falls 
on the final scene. The ideals of the saints, the 
courage of heroes, the sufferings of martyrs still 
teach their lesson. Reverence for God, justice, 
benevolence, the ethical worth of the individual are 
still dominant ideas. 

If our ideals are less severe, they are more prac- 
tical ; if our heroism is less phenomenal, it takes on 
new forms or is reserved for imperative need ; if 
we shrink from martyrdom, it may be because mar- 
tyrdom is sometimes folly; if we worship with less 
zeal, we are more conscious of the rational grounds 
of worship. Our justice and benevolence have be- 
come more useful and practical, and reach all men. 
The problems of physical comfort and material 
progress, of practical charity, of political justice, 
of social purity, of the rights of all classes of men, of 



OPTIMISM AND INTEREST. 



227 



education, of peace and good will, of the true grounds 
of religious faith are at the front, and claim our in- 
terest and devotion. Romance is not dead. The 
modern hero has his opportunity, an opportunity 
open as never before to all kinds and conditions of 
men. Every educated young man has an unlimited 
field, a free lance, and a cause worthy of his valor. 
Let him go forth, as an ideal knight of old, pure in 
heart and life, with consecrated sword, to aid mis- 
fortune, to defend the people, and fight bravely for 
truth and right. 

I have seen young men going about, dallying with 
this or that pleasure, physically lazy, mentally indo- 
lent, morally indifferent, burdened with ermui, aim- 
less, making no struggle. Will power must be 
awakened, life given to the mechanism, or it will go 
to rust and decay. While there is hope there is 
life. When interest is gone, the mind and spirit are 
dead, and the body is dying. What a hopeless lump 
of clay is he who, standing in this infinitely glorious 
world of ours and having eyes sees not, having ears 
hears not, and having a heart understands not. 

What shall men do who have not come to a con- 
sciousness of their better impulses, to whom the 
number and worth of human possibilities are un- 
known, who have hidden, silent chords, awaiting 
the touch that will set them vibrating ? Plainly by 
studying the highest types of men, the complete- 
ness of whose inner life is revealed in their deeds and 
thoughts. By contact with a better than himself one 
comes to know his better self. Under the influence 
of great companionship, whether in life or literature, 
new conceptions may appear in the vacant soul. 



228 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

A popular work of fiction lately published shows 
incidentally how great conceptions may grow in a 
foreign and incongenial soil. It treats of the times 
of Nero and the early struggles of the Christians in 
Rome. Amidst that folly, profligacy, debauchery, 
strife, and cruelty, the Christian purity, humility, 
brotherly love, and faith in God are made to stand 
forth in world-wide contrast. Through a series of 
dramatic events, possessing for him a powerful in- 
terest, a Roman patrician comes to receive the 
Christian ideas, and, under the nurture of interest, 
they gradually wax strong and become the domi- 
nant impulses of his being. A fellow patrician, 
maintaining a persistent attitude of indifference to 
the new truths, lives and dies, to the last a degen- 
erate Roman and a Stoic. 

A remote interest whose attainment is doubtful 
may come to wholly possess the mind. A young 
man, misunderstood and underestimated by friends, 
suffering years of unrequited effort, persevering in 
silent determination, standing for the right, making 
friends with all classes, seizing strongly the given 
opportunity, defying popularity, and thereby win- 
ning it, may gradually rise to prominence through 
long years of focusing of effort. 

Man's free will makes him responsible for his in- 
terests. Aristotle's dictum comes down to us in an 
unbroken line of royal descent: Learn to find inter- 
est in right things. Repugnance to the sternest 
demands of duty may be converted into liking, and, 
in the process, character is made. If you have a 
need for mathematics, science, history, poetry, or 
philanthropy, cultivate it, and interest will come as 
a benediction upon the effort. I sometimes think 



OPTIMISM AND INTEREST. 22Q 

the gods love those who in youth are compelled to 
walk in hard paths. Rudyard Kipling has a trace of 
imperialism which is not the least valuable feature 
of his unique writings. In a late story he describes 
the transformation of a son of wealth who is already 
far on the road to folly — one of those nervous, high- 
strung lads who in the face of hardship hides behind 
his mother, and is a particular nuisance to all sen- 
sitive people. Crossing the ocean in a palatial 
steamer, he chances to roll off into the Atlantic and 
is conveniently hauled aboard a fishing schooner, 
out for a three months* trip. He has literally 
tumbled into a new life, where he is duly whipped 
into a proper frame of mind and made to earn his 
passage and a small wage, by sharing the hardships 
of the fishermen. In time he is returned to his 
parents, together with a bonus of newly acquired 
common sense and love for useful work. Hardship 
did for him what all his father's wealth could not 
buy. 

It is in the time of need that men seek ultimate 
reality. A scientific writer, after speaking of our 
interest in the friendship and appreciation of men, re- 
fers to our need of friendship and appreciation in our 
time of stern trial, when we stand alone in the per- 
formance of duty. Then we have an intuitive con- 
sciousness of a Being supremely just and apprecia- 
tive, who recognizes worth at its exact value, and 
will duly reward. We feel that in Him we live and 
move and have our being. The finite conditions of 
life drive us to the thought of an infinite One, who 
possesses in their fullness the ideals imperfectly 
realized in us. When the world swings from under 
our feet we need a hold on heaven. In these mod- 



230 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



ern days we need the spirit of the hero who places 
honor above life, the spirit that places character 
above material advantage. Without it we are like 
Falstaff, going about asking " What is honor ? " and 
complaining because it ** hath no skill in surgery." 
Balzac, describing one of his human types, paints a 
striking picture. A miser is on his death bed. As 
the supreme moment approaches, and a golden cru- 
cifix is held before his face, he fixes his glazing eyes 
upon it with a look of miserly greed, and, with a 
final effort of his palsied hand, attempts to grasp it. 
He takes with him to the other world in his soul the 
gold, not the Christ crucified. 

There are people who demand a series of ever 
varied, thrilling, fully satisfying emotional experi- 
ences. For them *' the higher life consists in a sort 
of enthusiastic fickleness. The genius must wander 
like a humming-bird in the garden of divine emo- 
tions." When they do not save themselves by de- 
votion to scholarly work or by refuge in the church, 
they frequently end in pessimism, madness, or sui- 
cide. They exalt the Ego, do not lose self in the 
pursuit of proper objects of utility. Nordau has 
done the world one service in branding them as de- 
generates, living in abnormal excitement, instead of 
employing the calm, strong, balanced use of their 
powers. Their fate is fittingly suggested by a choice 
sentence from a well-known writer, describing 
Byron's " Don Juan " : " It is a mountain stream, 
plunging down dreadful chasms, singing through 
grand forests, and losing itself in a lifeless gray 
alkali desert." Goethe's Faust sets forth — be it 
noted, under the guidance of the devil — to find 



OPTIMISM AND INTEREST, 



231 



complete enjoyment, and tries the whole round of 
experience. Everything palls upon him, until he 
at last finds permanent satisfaction in earnest prac- 
tical labor for the welfare of his fellow-men. In the 
words of Faust : 

" He only earns his freedom and existence 
Who daily conquers them anew." 

Labor! It is the secret of happiness. We are 
born bundles of self-activity, in infancy ever devel- 
oping our powers by ceaseless movement, with 
eager curiosity ever reaching out toward knowledge 
of external things, ever laboring and constructing in 
imitation of the great, working world. Unless our 
energies are wasted by folly and our hearts are 
chilled by custom, it is the natural condition, even 
as children, older and wiser, but still as children, 
ever to extend with enthusiasm the boundary of 
knowledge, and in reality to join in the labor which 
was the play-work of our childhood. And when 
our effort overcomes, creates, develops power, aids 
humanity, we are conscious of the joy of true 
living. In our work self must be put in the back- 
ground. " He that loseth his life shall find it." 
The great Goethe, once weighed down with a mighty 
sorrow, forgot his grief in the study of a new and 
difficult science. 

It is a mistake to suppose that interest and hap- 
piness may not attach to duty. Duty is not a dead, 
barren plant that no more will put forth green 
leaves and blossom. Philanthropists do not need 
our sympathy. A man of learning, culture, and 
ability, capable of enjoying keenly the amenities of 
civilization, and of winning worldly success, goes on 



232 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

a mission to the interior of Darkest Africa. Amid 
hardships and dangers, he offers his hfe to help an 
aHen race in its suffering, ignorance, and savagery. 
He makes this devotion his supreme interest, and 
who shall say that his satisfaction vi^ill not be as 
great as that of the most favored son of wealth amid 
the luxuries of civilization ? " He that goeth forth 
and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless 
come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with 
im. 

One great purpose of education is to increase and 
strengthen our interests. It shows the many fields 
of labor and gives us power to work therein ; it re- 
veals the laws and beauties of the natural world ; it 
introduces us to many lands and peoples, and ac- 
quaints us with the problems and means of progress ; 
it opens to us the treasury of man's best thoughts; 
it gives us philosophical and poetic insight. 

Sydney Smith, indulging one of his quaint con- 
ceits, says: " If you choose to represent the various 
parts in life by holes upon a table, of different 
shapes — some circular, some triangular, some square, 
some oblong — and the persons acting these parts by 
bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally 
find that the triangular person has got into the 
square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a 
square person has squeezed himself into the round 
hole." This fancy has some truth, but more of 
nonsense. ** Men at some time are masters of their 
fates." Create your place in life and fill it, or adapt 
yourself to the best place you can find. The choice 
of occupation is important, but filling well the pro- 
fession chosen is more important. Turn your 



OPTIMISM AND INTEREST. 233 

knowledge and power to the performance of to- 
day's duty. 

Lowell in his "Vision of Sir Launfal " imparts 
one of the sweetest lessons man may learn. Sir 
Launfal is to set forth on the morrow in search of 
the Holy Grail, the cup used by our Saviour at the 
last supper, and in his sleep there comes to him a 
true vision. As in his dream he rides forth with 
pride of heart, at his castle gate a leper begs alms, 
and in scorn he tosses him a piece of gold. Years 
of fruitless search pass, and as he returns old, 
broken, poor, and homeless, he again meets the 
leper at the castle gate, and in Christ's name he 
offers a cup of water. And lol the leper stands 
forth as the Son of God, and proclaims the Holy 
Grail is found in the wooden cup shared with com- 
munion of heart. The morn came and Sir Launfal 
hung up his idle armor. He had found the object 
of his quest in the humble duty at hand. 

A poet of our day quaintly but not irreverently 
writes of the future life, "When the Master of all 
Good Workmen shall set us to work anew." There 
we shall work for the joy of it ; there we shall know 
things in their reality; there we shall enjoy the per- 
fect appreciation of the Master, and know the bless- 
edness of labor performed in His service. Thus the 
lesson is good for this world as well as the next. 

" And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall 

blame ; 
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame ; 
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, 
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They 

Are." 



THE ETHICAL AND ESTHETIC ELE- 
MENTS IN EDUCATION. 

A HISTORIC sentiment is associated with the 
laurel tree, sacred to Apollo ; with the laurel wreath 
which crowned the victor in the Pythian games, 
was the emblem of the poet, rested upon the heads 
of victorious generals, later indicated academic 
honors, and has become a figure of speech and a 
gem in poetic literature. The Baccalaureate Day — 
the day when victors in the endeavor to reach 
the graduate's goal figuratively are crowned with 
the fruited laurel — we would preserve. We would 
preserve it for its history, its significance, its associ- 
ations, its sentiments, its memories, its promise, 
and its religious suggestion. We would pre- 
serve it, not only to celebrate scholastic honors 
already won, but as a fitting occasion to consider 
some of those deeper lessons whose meaning 
will appear through experience in the School of 
Life. 

Higher education ever enlarges the borders of 
science and leads forth into new fields. It trans- 
mutes superstition into knowledge. It is the spirit 
of civilization and the leader of progress. It stands 
at the summit of human development, represents 
the aggregate of human knowledge, is the goal for 



ETHICAL AND yESTHETIC ELEMENTS. 



235 



intellectual endeavor, and it points the way for the 
discovery and progress of the future. 

There was a time when many scholars turned the 
pages of literature, in which were preserved the deeds, 
investigations, and thoughts of men, solely that they 
might develop and enjoy their own powers; when 
they devoted themselves to Truth for its own sake ; 
when they stood isolated, as in a world of their own, 
considering naught but their own welfare and, per- 
haps, their relation to their Maker. Men dwelt in 
caves, in remote deserts, or within gloomy walls to 
dwarf the bodily and worldly impulses and to rise 
to a serene contemplation of God and His truths, 
disregarding the appeal of ignorant or suffering hu- 
manity and the duty of adding works to faith. 

Our relations to our fellow-men give rise to nearly 
the entire Ethical Code. Society cares for us, edu- 
cates us, develops us, and it has claims upon us, 
not on purely selfish or utilitarian grounds, but 
under a higher ethical idea, whose sanction is the 
perfection and will of God. The law of God re- 
quires effort for humanity, government enjoins it, 
charity demands it. The Associationist, the Utili- 
tarian, and the Evolutionist teach it. 

An honorable character and a useful life are full 
of influence. And there are hundreds of ways, in 
some of which, without burdensome effort, one may 
be a blessing to others. Ignorance may be awak- 
ened to its condition, vice may be shamed, sorrow 
may be assuaged, fear may be changed into hope, 
sloth may be aroused to action, doubt may be con- 
verted into faith. 

Go forth and join in the labor you are fitted for. 
If you have a truth, utter it ; if you have had supe- 



236 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

rior privileges, impart to others; if you have an 
insight into principles of conduct, stand for them; 
if you have a trained eye and a deft hand, use your 
skill. Externalize the powers of your being; find 
outward expression for your inward thought. 

Thank God for a courageous man, a true Anglo- 
Saxon man, a man whose convictions are deeply 
rooted, and who guards them as his very life. 
Heroes, philanthropists, and martyrs are his exem- 
plars. He has a work to do, and he enters upon it 
as his fathers battled for the right. The sensualist, 
the dreamer, and the fatalist lie supine, are lulled by 
the summer breeze, and gaze upon the drifting pan- 
orama of clouds with playful imagination. The 
man of duty marches forth and takes the fixed stars 
for his guide. 

The educated young man of to-day has every 
reason to thank the stars under which he was born. 
Behind him is the teaching of the civilized world — 
the poetry and art of Greece, the laws and institu- 
tions of Rome, the growth of Christianity, the Medi- 
aeval commingling of forces and evolution of rare 
products, the Renaissance, the religious and polit- 
ical emancipation, invention, science, art, poetry, 
and philosophy. Behind him is the history of the 
Anglo-Saxon race, its courage and deeds of valor, 
its profound earnestness, its stern ideals. Behind 
him is Puritan New England and liberty. Around 
him lies the new land of promise with its natural 
blessings of air, sun, mountains, and plains, with its 
mineral wealth and industrial possibility, with its 
people of pride, energy, intelligence, and high enthu- 
siasm. Before him lie the development of a great 
and unique civilization, a wonder of material prog- 



ETHICAL AND ESTHETIC ELEMENTS. 237 

ress, a rare growth of poetic power and free spirit 
under new and fostering conditions. Before the 
youth of this State is the possibility of success in 
any pursuit, of rise to influence, of contributing 
to the formative period of a new commonwealth. 
There is every inducement to be a courageous, en- 
ergetic, and ideal man. Those who have made our 
history, most of them, are still living, but their 
work is nearly accomplished, and you will take up 
the responsibility. May our great system of public 
instruction contribute to fill the State in coming 
decades with noble men and women who are not 
afraid of ideals. 

• •••••••• 

Man may deceive others, but is shamed at the 
tribunal of his own better judgment. A celebrated 
lecturer describes what he calls the " Laughter of 
the Soul at Itself," " a laughter that it rarely hears 
more than once without hearing it forever." He 
says: " You would call me a partisan if I were to 
describe an internal burst of laughter of conscience 
at the soul. Therefore let Shakespeare, let Richter, 
let Victor Hugo, let cool secular history put before 
us the facts of human nature." We may refer to 
one illustration : Jean Valjean, one of Hugo's char- 
acters, an escaped and reformed convict, was about 
to see an innocent man condemned for his own act, 
through mistaken identity. He tried to make him- 
self believe self-preservation was justifiable, and as 
the mental struggle between Self and Duty went on 
he seemed to hear a voice: " Make yourself a mask 
if you please; but, although man sees your mask, 
God will see your face; although your neighbors see 
your life, God will see your conscience." And again 



238 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



came the internal burst of laughter. The author 
proceeds: *' Valjean finally confessed his identity; 
and the court and audience, when he uttered the 
words, * I am Jean Valjean,' ' felt dazzled in their 
hearts, and that a great light was shining before 
them.' " 

Science does away with superstition and many an 
error, it makes known the laws of nature, it applies 
them to practical ends, f\. is the handmaid of civili- 
zation, it emphasizes the welfare of humanity, it 
shows the working of the mechanism within the field 
of demonstrative knowledge, the finite, knowable 
land of the real. Science exceeds its purpose only 
whenever it proclaims that there is no field of spirit- 
ual knowledge,/ glimpses of which may be seen by 
souls that dwell upon the heights. Some would 
measure the earth with a carpenter's rule, forgetting 
Him " Who hath measured the waters in the hollow 
of His hand, and meted out Heaven with the span, 
and comprehended the dust of the earth in a meas- 
ure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the 
hills in a balance." 

Carlyle says: " Religion in most countries is no 
longer what it was, and should be — a thousand- 
voiced psalm from the heart of man to the invisible 
Father, the fountain of all goodness, beauty, truth, 
and revealed in every revelation of these ; but for 
the most part a wise, prudential feeling, grounded 
on mere calculation, a matter, as all others now are, 
of expediency and utility; whereby some smaller 
quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged 
for a larger quantum of celestial enjoyment." But 
again and more truly he says : " Religion cannot 



ETHICAL AND yESTHETIC ELEMENTS. 230 

pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide 
the stars of the sky, but the stars are there and will 
reappear." 

Once a pupil asked to be excused from exercises 
in which choice extracts from the Bible were some- 
times read, simply because they were from the Bible ; 
but he listened with pleasure to good thoughts from 
other books, though these books contained many a 
palpable error. Aside from the view which makes 
the Bible the Sacred Book of the Christian believer, 
he had not thought of its value to a large portion of 
the human race. He had not regarded it in the light 
of history and philosophy. The ideals for which 
the Hebrew race has stood, the wonderful prophe- 
cies of great and far-seeing men, the grand poems 
of faith and promise, the words of condensed wis- 
dom, the maxims for right living, the Beatitudes, 
the teaching of the Parables, the spirit of adora- 
tion, the moral code, the allegorical wisdom never 
had been contemplated apart from the religious 
view, against which he had imbibed a prejudice. 

Permit me to speak from the standpoint of his- 
tory and philosophy. The Christian religion is a 
chief source of our peculiar civilization, of the char- 
acter of our institutions, of the growth of altruism, 
of the equality of man, of the supreme worth of the 
inner motive, of charity, of liberty. It has given 
the world the highest examples of pure and devoted 
lives. 

I have a friend who is struck with the tale of how 
Buddha, wearing a Brahman's form, when " drought 
withered all the land," encountered a starving 
tigress with her cubs, and, in the unbounded pity of 
his heart, offered himself a sacrifice to their hunger. 



240 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



He says: " Here is a beautiful religion for me." 
And yet he is not touched by the story of a Saviour 
who carried the burden of the pains and sorrows of 
many and died that they might live. 

Disregard no good, wherever found. The human 
race must have its ideals. Thousands have felt 
what a famous man has expressed, that, were there 
no religion, men would of necessity invent it and 
worship a false idea. The religion of Mohammed 
is better than the idolatry of the Arab; the idolatry 
of the Arab was better than nothing. The races — 
each at its own stage — have been improved by their 
religions. The Scandinavian conception of Walhalla ; 
the Ancient Oracle at Dodona, where the priests in 
gloomy groves caught the responses of Zeus from 
the whisperings of the sacred oaks; the ancestor 
worship of the Chinese, the system of symbolism in 
Egypt — all represented the struggle toward ideal 
life and the notion of retributive justice. With 
bowed head and reverential heart I would stand in 
the presence of any sincere devotion, the uplift- 
ing of the soul in prayer to the God of its faith; 
how much more in the presence of that worship 
which the best intelligence of the best races has 
accepted. And how often one misinterprets the 
real meaning of an alien religion. The " Light of 
Asia" gives a meaning to Nirvana never heard 
from the pulpit: 

" Foregoing self, the Universe grows ' I '; 
If any teach NiRVANA is to cease, 
Say unto such they lie." 

Let young men learn as a common-sense proposi- 
tion that, though creeds may change, though there 



ETHICAL AND ESTHETIC ELEMENTS. 



241 



may be frequent readjustments of theological beliefs, 
the religious sentiment is an essential fact of our 
nature, and has a meaning the depth of which they 
have not sounded. 

The love of Art is necessary to the complete 
man. Whatever may be said of the cold, intellec- 
tual spirit, one attains a high standard of humanity 
only when he possesses a heart warmed and enno- 
bled by a vivid conception of the Beautiful found in 
the rainbow, the color of the leaf, and the sparkle 
of the rill, works framed in nature and hung in 
God's great art gallery — the universe. Man sees 
the real spirit shining through material forms, and 
architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry 
follow. Noble thought and action, right and truth, 
all perfect things partake of the essence of Beauty. 
Art adds to nature ; it casts a halo : 

" The light that never was on sea or land, 
The consecration and the Poet's dream." 

I have often dwelt upon the lines of Wordsworth: 

" To me the meanest flower that blows can g^ive 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

I have often wished to hear a sermon arguing from 
this thought the existence of God and the immor- 
tality of the soul. The peculiar nature of the soul, 
that transmutes sensation into divine emotion — a 
sweetness, longing, and reverence that are not of 
earth — is it not suggestive of all that is claimed by 
religious faith ? Wordsworth rightly ascribed a 
16 



242 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



dwarfed nature to him who sees only meaningless 
form and dull color in the flower: 

" A primrose by a river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more." 

That education is inadequate which ignores the 
value of man's aesthetic nature and neglects its 
growth. 



PROGRESS AS REALIZATION. 

" For now we see through a glass, darkly." 

** Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 
suns," 

In the process of development nature goes from 
potentiality to higher and higher actuality; what is 
in its being as tendency becomes real. We may not 
suppose the movement that of spontaneous energy 
toward accidental results, but rather the progressive 
realization of what is in the entire rational scheme 
of the universe. 

From the nebular mass sprang worlds and suns 
greater and less, substance and form in infinite 
variety, plant life in progressive orders, animal life 
in ascending types. Conscious existence gradually 
became responsive to the multitude of nature's im- 
pressions. The broken rays of light displayed 
their rainbow hues to the growing power and deli- 
cacy of the eye ; sound revealed its keys, qualities, 
and harmonies to the increasing susceptibility of the 
ear. Mind, as it developed, realized in its con- 
sciousness new laws and ever greater wonders of the 
outer world. On the objective side the laws were, 
the tinted sky and the murmuring stream were, be- 
fore mind became cognizant of them in their perfec- 
tion and beauty. Any serious contemplation of the 
great law of development, in its full meaning. 



244 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



should inspire hope and purpose in life. It sug- 
gests, not only sublime fulfilment for the world, 
but large possibility for the individual man. The 
natural world, plants, animals, the human race, in- 
stitutions, science, art, religion, all animate individ- 
ual beings, man as an individual, have their history 
of development, which suggests its lesson. 

Nature is aspiration. From chaos to the world 
of this geologic age, from protoplasm to man, from 
savagery to civilization, from ignorance to culture, 
from symbolism to developed art, from egoism to 
altruism, from germ to fruit, from infancy to matu- 
rity, from realization to higher realization, has been 
the process. And this plan seems the only one 
adapted to satisfy the nature and thought of ra- 
tional being. A world perfected, all possibilities 
realized, no chance for higher attainment — these are 
conditions of monotony and death. The old Hera- 
clitus was right when he proclaimed the principle 
of the world to be a becoming. 

The child's history, in a way, is an epitome of the 
history of the race. At first he is deaf and blind to the 
world of objects. Note how the possibilities of his 
being become realities, how knowledge grows in va- 
riety and definiteness, until the external world stands 
revealed, each object in its place, each event in its 
order, until notions of time, space, cause, and right 
rise into consciousness. The child is father of the 
man in the sense that the man can become only 
what he was implicitly in childhood. 

There is a tale of Greek mythology that Minerva 
sprang full-grown from the head of Jove — a perfect 
being. We would rather contemplate a being with 



PROGRESS AS REALIZATION. 



245 



possibilities not completely revealed. A philoso- 
pher said that if Truth were a bird which he had 
caught and held in his hand he would let it escape 
for the pleasure of renewed pursuit. There are the 
wonders of nature and of physical evolution ; but 
transcendently great are the wonders of mind, and 
the view of its possibilities of endless development — 
a thing that we believe will live on, when the sun, 
moon, and stars shall be darkened. 

The educated young man of to-day is the heir of 
the ages. All that science, art, literature, philoso- 
phy, civilization have achieved is his. All that 
thought has realized through ages of slow progress, 
all that has been learned through the mistakes 
made in the dim light of the dawn of human his- 
tory, all that has been wrought out through devo- 
tion, struggle, and suffering, he may realize by the 
process of individual education. The law of prog- 
ress still holds for the race and for him. He is a 
free factor, with a duty to help realize still more of 
the promise of human existence. 

Know thyself" was a wonderful maxim of the 
ancient philosopher, and it leads to knowledge. 

Know thy powers " is a better maxim for practice, 
and it is a fault that men regard their limitations 
and not their capabilities. We look with contempt 
upon a lower stage of our own growth. Not for 
the world would we lose a little from our highest 
attainment. The view is relative, and we have 
but to advance our position and life is subject to 
new interpretation. 

This is a period of the fading out of old ideals as 
they merge into higher ones not yet clearly defined. 



246 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

The reverence for nature, for its symbolism, the 
sanctions of religion, the transcendental belief, the 
poetic insight have somewhat fallen away, and the 
world is partly barren because not yet rehabilitated. 
Ideals are regarded as fit for schoolgirl essays, for 
weakly sentimentality, for dreamers, for those who 
do not understand the meaning of the new science 
and the new civilization. Ideals ! The transcen- 
dent importance of ideals is just appearing. Not 
an invention could be made, not a temple could be 
built, not a scheme for the improvement of govern- 
ment and society could be constructed, not a poem 
or a painting could be executed, not an instance of 
progress could occur without ideals. The world 
may be conceived as an ideal, the development of 
all things is toward ideals. We are at a stage of that 
development ; the progression is infinite, ever toward 
perfection, toward God, the Supreme Good. La- 
martine said wisely: " The ideal is only truth at a 
distance." 

Do circumstances forbid the possibility of higher 
development ? Then let the individual, in a chosen 
vocation, however humble, lose himself in obedi- 
ence and devotion to it, and thus, as a hero, live to 
his own well-being and the welfare of others. There- 
by he will find blessedness. Carlyle's " Everlasting 
Yea" shows this passage: "The Situation that 
has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied 
by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, ham- 
pered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now 
standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal ; work it out 
therefrom ; and working, believe, live, be free. 
Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment, too, 
is in thyself; thy Condition is but the stuff thou art 



PJ? OGRESS AS REALIZATION. 



247 



to shape that same Ideal out of; what matters 
whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the 
Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic ? O thou 
that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual and 
criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to 
rule and create, know this of a truth : the thine 
thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere, 
couldst thou only see! " 

Here is a striking story, related as true: A 
young man had met with misfortune, accident, and 
disease, and was suffering from a third paralytic 
stroke. He had lost the use of his voice, of his 
limbs, and of one arm. A friend visited him one 
day and asked how he was. He reached for his 
tablet and wrote: " All right, and bigger than any- 
thing that can happen to me." By energy of will, 
by slowly increasing physical and mental exercise, 
he reconquered the use of his body and mind — grad- 
ually compelled the dormant nerve centres to awake 
and resume their functions. Later he wrote: 
" The great lesson it taught me is that man is 
meant to be, and ought to be, stronger and more 
than anything that can happen to him. Circum- 
stances, fate, luck are all outside, and, if we cannot 
always change them, we can always beat them. If 
I couldn't have what I wanted, I decided to want 
what I had, and that simple philosophy saved 
me." 

A healthy philosophy, speculative or common 
sense, a healthy ethics, theoretical or practical, are 
indispensable to youth. Away with unfree will, 
and pessimism, and pleasure philosophy, and the 
notion of a perfected world and a goal attained. 
Substitute therefor vigorous freedom, cheerful faith 



248 EDUCATION AND LIFE, 

and hope, right and duty, and belief in develop- 
ment. Most of the great poets and artists, most of 
the successful business men have struggled with 
difificulties, and have wrought out of their conditions 
their success. Burns did not permit poverty, ob- 
scurity, lack of funds, lack of patronage, lack of 
time to destroy or weaken the impulse of his gen- 
ius. Shakespeare (if this poet-king be not indeed 
dethroned by logic) with but imperfect implements 
of his craft wrought heroically, and realized the 
highest possibilities of literary creation. The biog- 
raphy of success is filled with the names of men in 
a sense self-made. 

Education is the unfolding of our powers. There 
is the realm of knowledge: the relations of number 
and space, as revealed to a Laplace or a Newton ; 
the discoveries and interpretations of science, as 
they appear to a Tyndall or a Spencer; history, in 
whose light alone we can fully interpret any subject 
of knowledge; literature, whose pages glow with the 
best thought and feeling of mankind ; philosophy 
and religious truth, with their grasp of the meaning 
of life; art, that is a divine revelation in material 
form — all that has been realized in the consciousness 
of man. The race has taken ages to attain the pres- 
ent standard of civilization and enlightenment. The 
life of the individual attains it through education. 
With some distinction of native tendencies, educa- 
tion makes the difference between the Dahoman 
and the Bostonian. Tennyson, in his " Locksley 
Hall," in a mood of disappointment and pessimism, 
would seek the land of palms, of savagery and 
ignorance, and abjure the " march of Mind" and 
"thoughts that shake mankind;" but a healthful 



PROGRESS AS REALIZATION. 



249 



reaction arouses again his better impulse, and he 
counts " the gray barbarian lower than the Christian 
child. 

Every young man who aims at medicine, theol- 
ogy, law, or teaching, who aims at the best devel- 
opment of his powers, needs all the education he 
can gain before he enters upon independent labor. 
All need a broad foundation of general knowledge 
upon which to rear the structure of special knowl- 
edge and skill. Our grandfathers got along with 
the grammar school, the academy, college, and 
apprentice system ; we need the high school, the 
graduate school, and the professional school. Men 
go into the field of labor without map, implements, 
or skill, and then wonder why they do not suc- 
ceed. The generation has advanced ; more is known, 
more is demanded, and undeveloped thought and 
skill soon find their limitations in the practical 
world. 

We are called upon not only to feel, but to act; 
not merely to know, but to impart. The inner 
life is to realize itself in the outer world of 
action. Ideals are to be followed closely by 
deeds. A mere recluse is not in harmony with the 
times. 

There is a thought in the following passage from 
Goethe not inappropriate in this place: 

" Wouldst thou win desires unbounded ? 

Yonder see the glory burn ! 
Lightly is thy life surrounded — 

Sleep's a shell, to break and spurn ! 
When the crowd sways, unbelieving, 

Show the daring will that warms ! 
He is crowned with all achieving 

Who perceives and then performs." 



250 EDUCATION AND LIFE. 

The child does not at first discriminate colors, 
but later realizes distinctions permanently existent. 
The child does not at first realize the force of the 
abstract idea of right ; but, when the idea appears, 
it is not so much an evolution as a realization in the 
process of evolution of the child's consciousness. 
In the development of life on the earth a time came 
when human beings realized the existence and obli- 
gation of right as a new idea to them, not one 
" compounded of many simples." However pro- 
duced, we may suppose that when it appears it is a 
unique thing, a binding and divine thing, a thing 
carrying with it all the implications of the Kantian 
philosophy — God, Freedom, and Immortality. 

How religion, philosophy, ethics, maxims of ex- 
perience, dictates of prudence proclaim to the ear of 
the youth the necessity of realizing in idea and prac- 
tice a progressive, upward tendency of character! 
Vice is not a realization, but degeneration. Vice 
paralyzes the will, paralyzes the intellect, paralyzes 
the finer emotions, paralyzes the body, deadens the 
conscience to all that is positive and worthy. Men 
often regard only the larger duties, but character is 
often made by the sum of little duties performed. 
We are ready to use great opportunities only when 
we have trained our powers by diligent performance 
of humble work. Carlyle says: ''Do the Duty 
which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a 
Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become 
clearer." 

It broadens our view of religion to hold that the 
divine impulse works in all men, and leads them 
toward truth ; that no age or people has been left 
in utter darkness; that there is something com- 



PROGRESS AS REALIZATION. 25 I 

mon to all religions; and that in time God's full 
revelation will come to all nations. 

" Whoe'er aspires unweariedly 
Is not beyond redeeming." 

May we not ask if the experience distinctively 
called Christian is not an actuality, the highest 
blossom of religious growth — if it is not a realization 
possible for all, if it is not an ideal sweetly, nay, 
transcendently, inviting ? One who has read the 
following lines from Goethe will never forget them ; 
he has had a glimpse of the Holy of Holies: 

" Once Heavenly Love sent down a burning kiss 

Upon my brow, in Sabbath silence holy ; 

And, filled with mystic presage, chimed the church bell slowly, 
And prayer dissolved me in a fervent bliss, — 

A sweet, uncomprehended yearning 
Drove forth my feet through woods and meadows free, 

And while a thousand tears were burning, 
I felt a world arise for me." 

I sat on the veranda at my home at the close of 
a beautiful day. The western glow was fading into 
a faint rose color. The pine trees on the neighbor- 
ing mountain top stood out in magnified distinctness 
against the bright background. A bird in a near 
tree sang its good-night song. Just over the moun- 
tain peak a star shone out like a diamond set in pale 
gold. The great earth silently turned and hid the 
stai behind the pines. The ragged outline of moun- 
tains loomed up with weird effect. The breeze 
freshened and waved the branches of the elms grace- 
fully in broader curves; it seemed to come down 
from the heights as if with a message. It was 
a time for meditation. My thoughts turned for a 
hundredth time to the significance of the higher 



:52 



EDUCATION AND LIFE. 



emotional effects in the presence of natural beauty 
and sublimity, and in the contemplation of exalted 
aesthetic and ethical conceptions. 

When the hand of nature touches the chords of 
the human heart, may we not believe that the hand 
and the harp are of divine origin, and that the music 
produced is heavenly ? I mean that the human soul 
with all its refinement of emotion is not material, 
but spiritual and Godlike; that it has written upon 
it a sacred message, an assurance not of earth that 
its destiny is boundless in time and. possibility — a 
message profound in its meaning as the unsearch- 
able depth of God's being. 

All human institutions are progressive. Each 
stage of civilization is complete in itself, but pre- 
paratory to another and higher stage. Liberty, the 
art idea, the religious idea develop more and more 
as men realize in consciousness higher truths and 
standards. From the art that found expression in 
the cromlechs of the Druids to the highest embodi- 
ment of spiritual ideas, from crude faith to philo- 
sophic and religious insight, from rude mechanism to 
magnificei^e of structure and invention — such has 
been history, such, we believe, will be history. No 
wonder Carlyle exclaims: " Is not man's history and 
men's history a perpetual Evangel ? " — an announce- 
ment of glad tidings ? 

It is in this philosophy that the hope of the solu- 
tion of many present problems is found. In medi- 
aeval times the feudal system was the reconciliation 
of the opposing interests of men in a unity of service 
and protection. Later new conflicts arose which 
resulted in freedom for all classes. To-day opposi- 



FKOGJ^ESS AS REALIZATION. 



253 



tion has grown from the selfish interests of capital 
and labor, and we believe the reconciliation will be 
found in a unity which will equitably combine the 
interests of both. Change is the law. The phoenix, 
ever rising from its own ashes, is stronger in pinion 
and more daring in flight. 

Plato held to the doctrine of ideas, of eternal 
verities, the archetypes of all forms of existence, 
and believed growth in wisdom to be a gradual real- 
ization of these ideas in consciousness. Modern 
Platonism makes man a part of the Divine Being, 
with power to progress in knowledge of truth and in 
moral insight. This progress aims at an ultimate 
end that is both a realization and a reward. This 
view explains our nature and aspirations, our intui- 
tive notions and sense of right ; it explains the 
seeming providence that runs through history and 
makes all things work together for good ; it ex- 
plains that harmony of the soul with nature that 
constitutes divine music; it explains the insight of 
the poet and the faith of man. Any new theory 
must be a continuation of the past instead of stand- 
ing in contradiction to it, must reveal the deeper 
meaning of old truth. The spiritual truths that 
belong to the history of man must be included in 
the new philosophy. Theories must explain in ac- 
cordance with common sense, and make harmony, 
not discord, in our intellectual, aesthetic, and moral 
feelings. 

** For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 
" But when that which is perfect is come, then 
that which is in part shall be done away. 

" For now we see through a glass, darkly; but 



254 



EDUCATION AxVD LIFE. 



then face to face : now I know in part ; but then 
shall I know even as also I am known." 

" Still, through our paltry stir and strife, 

Glows down the wished Ideal, 
And Longing moulds in clay what Life 

Carves in the marble Real ; 
To let the new life in, we know. 

Desire must ope the portal ; — 
Perhaps the longing to be so 

Helps make the soul immortal. 

" Longing is God's fresh heavenward will 

With our poor earthward striving ; 
We quench it that we may be still 

Content with merely living : 
But would we learn that heart's full scope 

Which we are hourly wronging. 
Our lives must climb from hope to hope 

And realize our longing." 



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